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Db0 Blog OutputRespective post owners and feed distributorsSat, 16 Aug 2008 17:35:30 +0000Feed Informer http://feed.informer.com/The day I believed in Karmic Justicehttp://dbzer0.com/blog/the-day-i-believed-in-karmic-justice/
A Division by Zer0urn:uuid:604f5034-1111-fb86-0f8f-1b0d449a3b26Wed, 27 Sep 2017 16:11:58 +0000Have I ever written the story of how a high-school &#8220;friend&#8221; of mine performed the most absurdly underhanded act I&#8217;ve seen? No? Story time! When I moved to a new area in Athens in 1992, I started in a new Gymnasium (what would be called &#8220;Middle-school&#8221; I think for U.S. Americans.), and I had to [&#8230;]<p>Have I ever written the story of how a high-school &#8220;friend&#8221; of mine performed the most absurdly underhanded act I&#8217;ve seen? No? Story time!</p>
<p>When I moved to a new area in Athens in 1992, I started in a new Gymnasium (what would be called &#8220;Middle-school&#8221; I think for U.S. Americans.), and I had to make all new friends from scratch. As I was a very awkward kid (shy and geeky but feisty as well) I started getting into a lot of fights and became a bit of a pariah to my classmates.</p>
<p>I did make some friends, but I also made a lot of enemies. A lot of those enemies were content to simply torment me daily with new nicknames, spitballs in my hair during class, attempts at bullying etc, while others were very happy to simply goad the rest into keeping this up, or attempting to keep me as a social outcast. One of the latter was a kid we&#8217;ll call &#8220;Dewie&#8221; for this story.</p>
<p>So this kid was very very slimy. Always trying to get people to start shit with me, telling people lies or secrets about me etc. To my face though, he tried to be friendly and even to befriend me. To an extent, it worked, since I didn&#8217;t have a lot of people to hang out with; but since I also wasn&#8217;t completely oblivious, this relationship became a friend/nemesis situation. I.e. some weeks we&#8217;d be on just speaking terms, some others we&#8217;d be friends (e.g. I&#8217;d invite him home to play video games etc), some others we&#8217;d be bitter enemies, fist-fighting in the yard, or randomly on the street etc. It was a weird situation caused in part by my own character type. I&#8217;m very difficult to anger and very easy to forgive and trust people.</p>
<p>What didn&#8217;t help matters is that I had found some other people who I was friends with, and he managed to insert himself into that group as well. At that point this pissed me off because they knew we did not get along at the time and they nevertheless allowed him in. This further complicated things but this situation kept going on for 3 years.</p>
<p>Some of the things I remember Dewie did:</p>
<ul>
<li>We got into a fight. I wrestled him to the floor and he conceded. I got up to leave and he sucker-punched me in the face with all his strength.</li>
<li>I borrowed him a PC game I loved which came on 3 CD and I had bought original with all my savings. After he returned it I tried to play it, but for some reason I couldn&#8217;t load the 3rd stage (2nd CD). When I asked him about it, he said it was working fine for him. A common friend later told me he laughed to him about destroying the back of the CD with a screwdriver so that I wouldn&#8217;t be able to play anymore.</li>
<li>I got into a verbal fight on the street with a Roma boy (I can&#8217;t remember why). Without me knowing, he gathered his friends and went looking to beat me up. They couldn&#8217;t find me as I had already gone home but somehow Dewie got involved. He then not only led them to my apartment, but he rang my doorbell, and told me he had a surprise for me (At that point we were on speaking terms again). I lived on the 8th floor, so imagine my surprise when I open the door and see 3 Roma boys come out of the elevator and jump me! Dewie was sitting next to the elevator laughing his ass off. Fortunately another friend of mine was at my place at the time for video games so I screamed for support and with his and (iirc) my sister&#8217;s help we managed to drive them back (the kids were I think 1-3 years younger than us). Dewie escaped and somehow thought this was something to brag about.</li>
</ul>
<p>Even though all of that, my common group of friends would just no drop him from the circle, to the point that I would have to avoid hanging out with them when he was around, eventually causing me to be almost completely alone except 2 very closer friends. And even them I almost lost during this time.</p>
<p>But there was one thing that not just Broke the Camel&#8217;s back, but pile-dived into a pyramid of Camels. The act so low and stupid that it still stupefies me.</p>
<p>When I was 15, my mother died. At that point I was almost completely alone, friend-wise. Silver lining to that event was that people started talking to me again, even some people who had been my mortal enemies during all my high-school year. There was an outpouring of compassion during those first few weeks/months and the classes at my age-group decided to make a fund-drive to get me some economic support (I was completely orphaned at that point). Dewie, at the time happened to be the class accountant, so naturally he gathered the money for everyone to transfer to my family bank account. It was not a lot, but it was a symbolic amount (I think it would have been something like 100-200 Eur now).</p>
<p>Next day, Dewie is missing from school. Apparently he had to go urgently to the hospital. We were all wondering what happens, and then a common friend, Alex, drops this bombshell:</p>
<p>On the previous day, he run into Dewie on the street. Dewie was on the other side a small avenue, and as soon as he notices Alex, he raises a couple of Heavy Metal CDs and shouts to him something like &#8220;look what I got!&#8221;, and runs over to show him. At that point a motorcycle run blazing past and smacks straight onto Dewie who is dragged on the group with his face for a couple of meters.</p>
<p>In case you didn&#8217;t get it, Dewie has used the money my class-mates had gathered out of support for my dead mother to buy himself music CDs&#8230;</p>
<p>And Karmic Justice struck him down like a clay pigeon!</p>
<p>I don&#8217;t remember how Alex knew this. I think Dewie might have bragged about it already (he was notoriously stupid at times). Whatever the reason, news quickly spread out in school about this dastardly deed, and for half a year or so, the world turned a bit on its head and I was the liked-kid, while Dewie was the social pariah.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, due to my inherent awkwardness and Dewies inherent slimyness, this didn&#8217;t last. Within a year, things were back how they were, with Dewie still involved my group of friends and me being the outcast.</p>
<p>But at least that act was so heinous that I could never forgive him for it, and would avoid him like the plague from then on.</p>
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</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Db0/~4/GFKPcsh3L7k" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>You might be a Torbjörn main if…http://dbzer0.com/blog/you-might-be-a-torbjorn-main-if/
A Division by Zer0urn:uuid:db0802b8-c8e4-0e74-12d0-8405098168a3Thu, 03 Aug 2017 06:24:02 +0000Inspired by this reddit post, I decided to compile my own list <p><img class="alignright wp-image-14220" src="https://i1.wp.com/dbzer0.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Torbjorn_Spray_-_Icon.png?resize=215%2C217" alt="" data-recalc-dims="1" />Inspired by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Overwatch/comments/6r5dmv/you_might_be_a_torbjorn_main_if/">this reddit post</a>, I decided to compile my own list <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/2.3/72x72/1f642.png" alt="Why ‘noob’ is my favourite insulthttp://dbzer0.com/blog/why-noob-is-my-favourite-insult/
A Division by Zer0urn:uuid:496b51bf-47b0-6d24-a4b7-a4ec7e793eabFri, 28 Apr 2017 09:30:22 +0000&#8216;Noob&#8217; has its origins in the word &#8216;newbie&#8217; which in turn simply means someone who is new to (usually) an online game and therefore has a fairly low skill at its gameplay. &#8216;Noob&#8217; or &#8216;n00b&#8217; in turn is a slang term/insult to signify someone who is both a newbie at something, but at the same [&#8230;]<p>&#8216;Noob&#8217; has its origins in the word &#8216;newbie&#8217; which in turn simply means someone who is new to (usually) an online game and therefore has a fairly low skill at its gameplay. &#8216;Noob&#8217; or &#8216;n00b&#8217; in turn is a slang term/insult to signify someone who is both a newbie at something, but at the same time has a very inflated sense of their prowess and capabilities at that task. Often that would be coupled with a bad-attitude as such people seem to be prime victims of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect">Dunning-Kruger effect</a>.</p>
<p>The reason why I like to use it as an insult in most appropriate situations is that it connotes a lack of experience with an implied false sense of superiority/knowledge in one 4-letter word. It big advantage is that it&#8217;s not relying of ableism, whereas the insult is effectively comparing the accused to people with lower mental capacity or non-<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurotypical">neurotypicality</a>, which is something I&#8217;ve been trying to actively avoid doing.</p>
<p>Rather, being a noob is something entirely within one&#8217;s control; one merely has to recognize their lack of experience/ability and act accordingly. Therefore being <em>compared<strong> </strong></em>to a noob is merely a one-two hit to one&#8217;s sense of skill and their attitude, which for many immature man-babies online, can sting even further.</p>
<p>To make matters even better, noob is the kind of word that can easily be used both playfully towards a friend, as well a more seriously towards someone who&#8217;s feelings you might want to hurt. Of course, it&#8217;s not appropriate in all contexts, but you&#8217;d be surprised in how many it can fit.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
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</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Db0/~4/a6hJxO3fk6M" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Trump Metaphorshttp://dbzer0.com/blog/trump-metaphors/
A Division by Zer0urn:uuid:3116f0b8-5944-1c2f-c2af-dacc89440b59Thu, 27 Apr 2017 11:44:39 +0000I quite liked how this person put it after Trump instantly flip-flopped on NAFTA: [Trump] walked into the control room, thinking he&#8217;s gonna change everything and it&#8217;ll be great. But the walls are plastered in tiny buttons and switches and dials and he realises he doesn&#8217;t know what 90% of them do. There was a big new switch [&#8230;]<p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/67t1kf/trump_agrees_not_to_terminate_nafta_at_this_time/dgt4jsy/">I quite liked how this person put it</a> after Trump instantly flip-flopped on NAFTA:</p>
<blockquote><p>[Trump] walked into the control room, thinking he&#8217;s gonna change everything and it&#8217;ll be great. But the walls are plastered in tiny buttons and switches and dials and he realises he doesn&#8217;t know what 90% of them do.</p>
<p>There was a big new switch on the wall labelled &#8220;TPP&#8221; that was in the &#8216;off&#8217; position. He said he wouldn&#8217;t turn it on, and he successfully doesn&#8217;t turn it on. That was easy. How hard could this be?</p>
<p>He pulls the lever marked &#8220;BORDERS&#8221; down, towards the &#8216;off&#8217; position. Mission accomplished. But after a moment it springs right back up on its own. He pulls it down again, and it springs back up again. Embarrassed, he quickly moves to another part of the room.</p>
<p>He goes over to the dial marked &#8220;NORTH KOREA&#8221; and starts twisting it in a clockwise direction, upon which an alarm on the ceiling starts ringing and flashing red. Everyone&#8217;s watching him and he wants to look like he knows what he&#8217;s doing, so he decides to leave it in its new position and see what happens.</p>
<p>Then he wondered over to the big switch labelled &#8220;NAFTA&#8221;, but the crowd behind him made a huge commotion, and his assistants caught his eye and shook their heads, so he&#8217;s backing away.</p>
<p>Meanwhile there are a bunch of pressure gauges creeping into the red, but he hasn&#8217;t actually noticed them yet.</p></blockquote>
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</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Db0/~4/F2uSmQj749E" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Quote of the Day: Idea of Trumphttp://dbzer0.com/blog/quote-of-the-day-idea-of-trump/
A Division by Zer0urn:uuid:0a771700-8fbc-0840-9314-c9fd8be4c082Wed, 01 Mar 2017 09:55:14 +0000Quoth Spiddz: Donald Trump is a poor man&#8217;s idea of a rich man, dumb man&#8217;s idea of a smart man, and weak man&#8217;s idea of a strong man.<p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/5wsrjf/us_president_donald_trumps_administration_is/decy38u/">Quoth Spiddz:</a></p>
<blockquote><p>Donald Trump is a poor man&#8217;s idea of a rich man, dumb man&#8217;s idea of a smart man, and weak man&#8217;s idea of a strong man.</p></blockquote>
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</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Db0/~4/0trHdNrzuyk" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>The equivocation of ‘censorship’http://dbzer0.com/blog/the-equivocation-of-censorship/
A Division by Zer0urn:uuid:4816c3d5-64eb-1149-fdba-e516288c1116Mon, 20 Feb 2017 13:10:29 +0000There is a common discussion that I see popping up whenever activists succeed in shutting down an event from some sort of reactionary, recent example being the cancelling of talk by notorious right-with troll Milo Yannopoulos. Among other arguments on the morality of events, I see people bringing up the idea that shutting down such [&#8230;]<p>There is a common discussion that I see popping up whenever activists succeed in shutting down an event from some sort of reactionary, recent example being the cancelling of talk by notorious right-with troll Milo Yannopoulos.</p>
<p>Among other arguments on the morality of events, I see people bringing up the idea that shutting down such events is censorship. As soon as this happens, usually an argument starts on whether it really is such. One side claiming that it is not because it&#8217;s not a state actor that is suppressing free speech, while the other is claiming that in the absolute technical terms, <a href="https://www.google.de/search?q=define+censorship">it totally is</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p><strong>censorship</strong><br />
ˈsɛnsəʃɪp/<br />
noun<br />
1.<br />
the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security.<br />
&#8220;the regulation imposes censorship on all media&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>However what seems to me is happening is rather some kind of equivocation. An equivocation in fact, between two meanings which on a word that don&#8217;t appear to be formalized yet as distinct in dictionaries.</p>
<p>Specifically, it there&#8217;s <em>the</em> popular concept of censorship which takes the above definition and adds &#8220;by state actors&#8221; in the end. Not only that, but more often than not, one will imagine also brutality involved and 1984-like images might come to mind. As a concept, this is the one that makes people icky. In fact, this is the concept one attempts to invoke when they use it as the basis of the argument: &#8220;But it&#8217;s censorship!&#8221;</p>
<p>What is happening specifically is that all the unwritten baggage of &#8220;censorship&#8221;- which do not belong to its official definition but are attached to it anyway due to many years or red scare propaganda &#8211; are being used to undermine an act which does not share those characteristics at all!</p>
<p>The actual &#8220;censorship&#8221; currently happening, let&#8217;s call it censorship-lite for reference, might be technically accurate as a term to describe the effect, but if seen without relying on defining it, is quite a mild effect. In the case above it effectively involved people exerting peer (or sometimes market) pressure on some venues to not provide a platform to known reactionaries.</p>
<p>One would think, if such censorship-lite is not a big deal, why does it keep coming up from such valiant defenders of free speech (/s)? There is a further unspoken argument being packed in the accusations of censorship, in the form of the slippery slope fallacy. The point being made in subtext is: &#8220;This is how it starts, today you stop Milo Yannopoulos&#8217; speech and tomorrow a boot is stomping a human face &#8211; forever.&#8221;</p>
<p>Please forgive my exaggeration but I hope it makes my point clear what is actually happening and why such arguments on the definition of the word never seem to lead anywhere.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
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</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Db0/~4/AJEYW3zUeV4" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Truly Orwelianhttp://dbzer0.com/blog/truly-orwelian/
A Division by Zer0urn:uuid:ba255251-d5ee-4b06-afa0-253db85f580eMon, 23 Jan 2017 13:32:24 +0000Saw this on reddit, and I had to share. Go read all of it. Quoth SarcasticSadist: Trump has demonstrated an uncanny, almost unbelievable ability to just bend the past however he wants. And you can protest all you want; nobody is really stopping him. We all get shocked in the moment &#8211; How could he [&#8230;]<p><a href="https://np.reddit.com/r/news/comments/5phjg9/kellyanne_conway_spicer_gave_alternative_facts_on/dcrdfgn">Saw this on reddit</a>, and I had to share. Go read all of it.</p>
<p>Quoth SarcasticSadist:</p>
<blockquote><p>Trump has demonstrated an uncanny, almost unbelievable ability to just bend the past however he wants. And you can protest all you want; nobody is really stopping him. We all get shocked in the moment &#8211; How could he have the unmitigated gall to say this shocking thing? But he delivers these shocks so regularly that nobody has time to fully process them. If a scandal blows up for more than two days, Trump will just do something else outrageous and the former story will be dropped to cover the new one. Trump is exploiting the media’s goldfish attention span. He’s overloading the news, giving them so much scandal that they don’t even have time to cover it all.</p></blockquote>
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</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Db0/~4/pSN7-Urkoo4" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Every 4 yearshttp://dbzer0.com/blog/every-4-years/
A Division by Zer0urn:uuid:319af5d1-1f44-090b-0135-503d827e4f68Wed, 09 Nov 2016 14:15:20 +0000When you rely on one vote every 4 years to be the epitome of all your democratic power, it&#8217;s expected to become depressed when your choice doesn&#8217;t make it. Organize and attempt democratic control in all aspects of your life: Work, Neighborhoods, Online Communities etc. Then not only will losing that 4-year vote not make you [&#8230;]<p>When you rely on one vote every 4 years to be the epitome of all your democratic power, it&#8217;s expected to become depressed when your choice doesn&#8217;t make it.</p>
<p>Organize and attempt democratic control in all aspects of your life: Work, Neighborhoods, Online Communities etc. Then not only will losing that 4-year vote not make you quite so sad, but you&#8217;ll see <a href="http://dbzer0.com/blog/voting-is-bad-mkay/">it doesn&#8217;t matter anyway</a>.</p>
<p>PS: Holy shit the drama today is overflowing.</p>
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</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Db0/~4/Og1BEZtz9-E" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Vocabularyhttp://dbzer0.com/blog/vocabulary/
A Division by Zer0urn:uuid:163c10f6-95ac-b36e-6033-9c5355b007c8Tue, 12 Jul 2016 09:51:09 +0000Been a while since I took an e-test, but this one looked interesting (h/t Plutonick) I&#8217;m a bit surprised myself. I was always good in vocabulary and I knew I was good in English, but this was unexpected. Maybe I just got the easy questions?<p>Been a while since I took an e-test, but <a href="http://www.arealme.com/vocabulary-size-test/en/">this one</a> looked interesting (h/t Plutonick)</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-13639" src="http://i0.wp.com/dbzer0.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/vocab.png?resize=812%2C437" alt="vocab.png" data-recalc-dims="1" /></p>
<p>I&#8217;m a bit surprised myself. I was always good in vocabulary and I knew I was good in English, but this was unexpected. Maybe I just got the easy questions?</p>
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</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Db0/~4/OJnCrEeYK14" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Out of ammohttp://dbzer0.com/blog/out-of-ammo/
A Division by Zer0urn:uuid:8879c54e-2dc1-41f2-2311-60c47244d227Wed, 22 Jun 2016 07:58:39 +0000As you may have heard by now, Doomtown:Reloaded is being discontinued. As part of the design team for the past 3 years, it&#8217;s been a rough but wonderful ride and I&#8217;m really proud of what we&#8217;ve achieved in terms of balance and gameplay. Unfortunately the writing was on the wall at this point as event [&#8230;]<p>As you may have heard by now, <a href="https://www.alderac.com/doomtown/2016/06/21/riding-off-sunset/">Doomtown:Reloaded is being discontinued</a>. As part of the design team for the past 3 years, it&#8217;s been a rough but wonderful ride and I&#8217;m really proud of what we&#8217;ve achieved in terms of balance and gameplay.</p>
<p>Unfortunately the writing was on the wall at this point as event attendance had slumped, and online activity was barely existent. Even with some of the best tools available for a card game, in the form of DoomtownDB and OCTGN for online gameplay &#8211; things that are not given for most card games &#8211; it seemed like we were struggling to retain people&#8217;s interest. Of course I&#8217;m speaking only as an observer since I don&#8217;t really have an insight into sales records of any sort, but it felt to me that the past 6 months were more anemic than is healthy.</p>
<p>So while sad, I can&#8217;t say I&#8217;m horribly surprised by this turn of events. Nevertheless, the upcoming expansions are some of the best we&#8217;ve put out until now, and the final Pine Box&#8217;s new homes will open a lot more avenues for gameplay as well.</p>
<p>I plan to write a &#8220;post-mortem&#8221; from my perspective on Doomtown:Reloaded, so keep an eye out if you&#8217;re interested.</p>
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</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Db0/~4/NTu9OSj6M8o" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>I’m ba-ack!http://dbzer0.com/blog/im-ba-ack/
The Wesnoth Journals » Db0urn:uuid:a2875bc2-46d1-3ba4-c45b-5f3a8833eb60Wed, 22 May 2013 14:36:33 +0000Yea, baby, yea! I have finally moved away from Dreamhost after 6 years of being a loyal customer. After barely being able to run a simple murmur server and 2 wordpress sites without multiple reboots per day due to lack of resources, even on a VPS, enough was very much enough. So I have finally [...] <p><a href="http://commons.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Paris_servers_DSC00190.jpg"><img class="zemanta-img-inserted zemanta-img-configured alignright" title="front view of the cluster of Wikimedia servers..." alt="front view of the cluster of Wikimedia servers..." src="http://dbzer0.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/300px-Paris_servers_DSC00190.jpg" width="300" height="225" /></a></p>
<p>Yea, baby, yea!</p>
<p>I have finally moved away from <a href="http://dbzer0.com/blog/tag/dreamhost/">Dreamhost</a> after 6 years of being a loyal customer. After barely being able to run a simple <a href="http://mumble.sourceforge.net/Running_Murmur">murmur </a>server and 2 wordpress sites without multiple reboots per day due to lack of resources, even <a href="http://dbzer0.com/blog/dreamhost-ps-activated/">on a VPS</a>, enough was very much enough.</p>
<p>So I have finally decided to make the jump <a href="http://contabo.com/">into a different host</a> which came recommended from a friend and until now I&#8217;m very glad I did so. Not only is my speed blazing fast compared to dreamhost, not only do I have 10 times the available resources, not only do I have full root access and ability to customize my sites fully, but I&#8217;m also paying less than 1/3rd of what I used to!</p>
<p>Now this is a significant difference and I really struggle to understand why I had to pay $15 extra a month just to get 300 lousy MBs of ram which was a also a hard limit that caused by whole server to reboot during each resource spike? Why indeed did 2 wordpress sites with no particular frills and a mumble servers with 5 users caused 1-10 reboots a day for years? <a href="http://dbzer0.com/blog/is-dreamhost-ps-simply-a-way-for-dreamhost-to-wash-their-hands-of-support/">Why couldn&#8217;t dreamhost support</a> in troubleshooting this very worrying performance of their services?</p>
<p>In the end I really had myself to blame for a lot of it. I was far too lazy and a bit scared of going to fully rooted hosting and got very complacent and used to the user-friendliness of the dreamhost panel. It is all kinds of awesome how easy dreamhost makes it to set-up and maintain sites, emails, DNS entries, cro</p>
<p>n jobs and so on. It&#8217;s such a pity that their performance has been in the toilet for the past 2 years for me.</p>
<p>I could even have lived with the 2-5 seconds per page load, or the visible lag I has in a simple ssh connections to their servers. But 20 server reboots in a day while dreamhost support were telling me it&#8217;s my own damn fault for running vanilla wordpress, was just too much.</p>
<p>All that was part of the reason why I&#8217;ve been so inactive in blogging lately as well, aside for my newborn child and my new hobby in octgn development that is; it was just so frustrating trying to blog in a server that took second to load each panel and literally went down every time I hit &#8220;publish&#8221;.</p>
<p>I hope that I&#8217;ll start writing a bit more now that my snazzy new system doesn&#8217;t seem to be making it a chore to put two words together on the net <img src='http://dbzer0.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif' alt=':)' class='wp-smiley' /> </p>
<div class="zemanta-pixie"><img class="zemanta-pixie-img" alt="" src="http://img.zemanta.com/pixy.gif?x-id=86b610f9-6d34-4707-abc7-61b79110d5a2" /></div>
<p><a href="http://commons.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Paris_servers_DSC00190.jpg"><img class="zemanta-img-inserted zemanta-img-configured alignright" title="front view of the cluster of Wikimedia servers..." alt="front view of the cluster of Wikimedia servers..." src="http://dbzer0.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/300px-Paris_servers_DSC00190.jpg" width="300" height="225" /></a></p>
<p>Yea, baby, yea!</p>
<p>I have finally moved away from <a href="http://dbzer0.com/blog/tag/dreamhost/">Dreamhost</a> after 6 years of being a loyal customer. After barely being able to run a simple <a href="http://mumble.sourceforge.net/Running_Murmur">murmur </a>server and 2 wordpress sites without multiple reboots per day due to lack of resources, even <a href="http://dbzer0.com/blog/dreamhost-ps-activated/">on a VPS</a>, enough was very much enough.</p>
<p>So I have finally decided to make the jump <a href="http://contabo.com/">into a different host</a> which came recommended from a friend and until now I&#8217;m very glad I did so. Not only is my speed blazing fast compared to dreamhost, not only do I have 10 times the available resources, not only do I have full root access and ability to customize my sites fully, but I&#8217;m also paying less than 1/3rd of what I used to!</p>
<p>Now this is a significant difference and I really struggle to understand why I had to pay $15 extra a month just to get 300 lousy MBs of ram which was a also a hard limit that caused by whole server to reboot during each resource spike? Why indeed did 2 wordpress sites with no particular frills and a mumble servers with 5 users caused 1-10 reboots a day for years? <a href="http://dbzer0.com/blog/is-dreamhost-ps-simply-a-way-for-dreamhost-to-wash-their-hands-of-support/">Why couldn&#8217;t dreamhost support</a> in troubleshooting this very worrying performance of their services?</p>
<p>In the end I really had myself to blame for a lot of it. I was far too lazy and a bit scared of going to fully rooted hosting and got very complacent and used to the user-friendliness of the dreamhost panel. It is all kinds of awesome how easy dreamhost makes it to set-up and maintain sites, emails, DNS entries, cro</p>
<p>n jobs and so on. It&#8217;s such a pity that their performance has been in the toilet for the past 2 years for me.</p>
<p>I could even have lived with the 2-5 seconds per page load, or the visible lag I has in a simple ssh connections to their servers. But 20 server reboots in a day while dreamhost support were telling me it&#8217;s my own damn fault for running vanilla wordpress, was just too much.</p>
<p>All that was part of the reason why I&#8217;ve been so inactive in blogging lately as well, aside for my newborn child and my new hobby in octgn development that is; it was just so frustrating trying to blog in a server that took second to load each panel and literally went down every time I hit &#8220;publish&#8221;.</p>
<p>I hope that I&#8217;ll start writing a bit more now that my snazzy new system doesn&#8217;t seem to be making it a chore to put two words together on the net <img src='http://dbzer0.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif' alt=':)' class='wp-smiley' /> </p>
<div class="zemanta-pixie"><img class="zemanta-pixie-img" alt="" src="http://img.zemanta.com/pixy.gif?x-id=86b610f9-6d34-4707-abc7-61b79110d5a2" /></div>
But I'm a nice guyhttp://dbzer0.com/blog/but-im-a-nice-guy/
The Wesnoth Journals » Db0urn:uuid:17a35ab0-63cb-17a6-f138-6ca01b7ede71Tue, 30 Apr 2013 04:59:00 +0000Short and to the point <p><iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/64941331" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe></p>
<p>Short and to the point <img src='http://dbzer0.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif' alt=':)' class='wp-smiley' /> </p>
<p><iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/64941331" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe></p>
<p>Short and to the point <img src='http://dbzer0.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif' alt=':)' class='wp-smiley' /> </p>
Android: Netrunner on OCTGN really picking up speedhttp://dbzer0.com/blog/android-netrunner-on-octgn-really-picking-up-speed/
The Wesnoth Journals » Db0urn:uuid:ba4e8839-0c8d-8c8b-c1d1-20e470cfc44bTue, 23 Apr 2013 20:09:34 +0000I haven&#8217;t been blogging much lately because my interest has been mostly consumed in my development of the Android:Netrunner OCTGN game definition and its peripheral activities, mainly casting games, streaming, promoting and of course playing it Just recently we finished the biggest tournament in the world with 128 international participants playing over almost 3 months [...] <p>I haven&#8217;t been blogging much lately because my interest has been mostly consumed in my development of the Android:Netrunner OCTGN game definition and its peripheral activities, mainly casting games, streaming, promoting and of course playing it <img src='http://dbzer0.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif' alt=':)' class='wp-smiley' /> </p>
<p>Just recently we finished <a href="http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/924483/octgn-netrunner-tournament-2-announcements">the biggest tournament in the world</a> with 128 international participants playing over almost 3 months (1 matchup per week), and as part of promoting the event and the game, I took to casting the matches so that we can later post them online for other to watch. Many many cumulative hours of recording later, and I&#8217;ve created a youtube playlist of a significant number of the top matches from the tournament, mostly casted by yours truly, along with my personal NBN of co-casters and video editors. Take a peek if you want <img src='http://dbzer0.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif' alt=';)' class='wp-smiley' /> </p>
<p><span class='embed-youtube' style='text-align:center; display: block;'><iframe class='youtube-player' type='text/html' width='640' height='390' src='http://www.youtube.com/embed/videoseries?list=PLIy7kFkKC0Y2zOHJMCfehCi4p2TIRE_Zm&#038;hl=en_US' frameborder='0'></iframe></span></p>
<p>Not only that,but once the tournament was about to finish, I decided to take it even further and livestream the final four matches, just to bring some extra excitement. About 20 people tuned in to watch the final matches and we had quite a bit of commentary and all around fun. <a href="http://www.twitch.tv/dbzer0/b/393879388">Take a look how it turned out.</a></p>
<p>But other than that, I now regularly stream my games online as I play them, just so that I may raise interest in this great game and also inspire others to do the same. And in fact I&#8217;m glad to say it has worked brilliantly. Already we have almost <a href="http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/966153/twitch-tv-streamers">half a dozen players who stream their games regularly</a>, and we even had <a href="http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/966245/octgn-if-youre-recordingstreaming-a-match">some cultural complaints about the practice</a>. All this is great news, as it shows a healthy community that will only keep getting larger and more active.</p>
<p>And we already have plans for <a href="http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/962471/octgn-android-netrunner-league-alpha-run">new leagues</a> and tournaments and people keep inventing more ways to enjoy this game and spead the joy around. The more interest all these generate, the better the actual game will do in sales, which is just great for everyone involved. The future looks bright!</p>
<p>PS: Feel free to follow me on <a href="http://www.twitch.tv/dbzer0">twitch.tv</a> or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/db0">youtube</a>. My games might not be as well commented or edited as some others, but I make up for it in quantity. <img src='http://dbzer0.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif' alt=':)' class='wp-smiley' /> </p>
<p>I haven&#8217;t been blogging much lately because my interest has been mostly consumed in my development of the Android:Netrunner OCTGN game definition and its peripheral activities, mainly casting games, streaming, promoting and of course playing it <img src='http://dbzer0.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif' alt=':)' class='wp-smiley' /> </p>
<p>Just recently we finished <a href="http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/924483/octgn-netrunner-tournament-2-announcements">the biggest tournament in the world</a> with 128 international participants playing over almost 3 months (1 matchup per week), and as part of promoting the event and the game, I took to casting the matches so that we can later post them online for other to watch. Many many cumulative hours of recording later, and I&#8217;ve created a youtube playlist of a significant number of the top matches from the tournament, mostly casted by yours truly, along with my personal NBN of co-casters and video editors. Take a peek if you want <img src='http://dbzer0.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif' alt=';)' class='wp-smiley' /> </p>
<p><span class='embed-youtube' style='text-align:center; display: block;'><iframe class='youtube-player' type='text/html' width='640' height='390' src='http://www.youtube.com/embed/videoseries?list=PLIy7kFkKC0Y2zOHJMCfehCi4p2TIRE_Zm&#038;hl=en_US' frameborder='0'></iframe></span></p>
<p>Not only that,but once the tournament was about to finish, I decided to take it even further and livestream the final four matches, just to bring some extra excitement. About 20 people tuned in to watch the final matches and we had quite a bit of commentary and all around fun. <a href="http://www.twitch.tv/dbzer0/b/393879388">Take a look how it turned out.</a></p>
<p>But other than that, I now regularly stream my games online as I play them, just so that I may raise interest in this great game and also inspire others to do the same. And in fact I&#8217;m glad to say it has worked brilliantly. Already we have almost <a href="http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/966153/twitch-tv-streamers">half a dozen players who stream their games regularly</a>, and we even had <a href="http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/966245/octgn-if-youre-recordingstreaming-a-match">some cultural complaints about the practice</a>. All this is great news, as it shows a healthy community that will only keep getting larger and more active.</p>
<p>And we already have plans for <a href="http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/962471/octgn-android-netrunner-league-alpha-run">new leagues</a> and tournaments and people keep inventing more ways to enjoy this game and spead the joy around. The more interest all these generate, the better the actual game will do in sales, which is just great for everyone involved. The future looks bright!</p>
<p>PS: Feel free to follow me on <a href="http://www.twitch.tv/dbzer0">twitch.tv</a> or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/db0">youtube</a>. My games might not be as well commented or edited as some others, but I make up for it in quantity. <img src='http://dbzer0.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif' alt=':)' class='wp-smiley' /> </p>
I don't usually post cat videoshttp://dbzer0.com/blog/i-dont-usually-post-cat-videos/
The Wesnoth Journals » Db0urn:uuid:f3168504-78cd-e807-461d-3662a0b581f9Fri, 01 Mar 2013 07:32:01 +0000But this was actually funny. <p><span class='embed-youtube' style='text-align:center; display: block;'><iframe class='youtube-player' type='text/html' width='640' height='390' src='http://www.youtube.com/embed/X3iFhLdWjqc?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;fs=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;wmode=transparent' frameborder='0'></iframe></span></p>
<p>But this was actually funny.</p>
<p><span class='embed-youtube' style='text-align:center; display: block;'><iframe class='youtube-player' type='text/html' width='640' height='390' src='http://www.youtube.com/embed/X3iFhLdWjqc?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;fs=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;wmode=transparent' frameborder='0'></iframe></span></p>
<p>But this was actually funny.</p>
I'm just going to leave this here.http://dbzer0.com/blog/im-just-going-to-leave-this-here/
The Wesnoth Journals » Db0urn:uuid:9de24356-0687-8dae-feaa-d6df218230afFri, 01 Mar 2013 07:20:22 +0000/me blushes <p><a href="http://boardgamegeek.com/article/11543591">/me blushes</a></p>
<p><a href="http://boardgamegeek.com/article/11543591">/me blushes</a></p>
Making Android:Netrunner videoshttp://dbzer0.com/blog/making-androidnetrunner-videos/
The Wesnoth Journals » Db0urn:uuid:fb03b0a2-5bab-d0a3-1750-ff700468b94fTue, 19 Feb 2013 09:51:06 +0000Just thought I&#8217;d throw this out there. I&#8217;ve recently started recording my Android:Netrunner games played with on OCTGN in the very vibrant community that has formed around it. To make things easier for me, I&#8217;ve been streaming directly to twitch.tv and afterwards, for the more interesting games, also exporting them to youtube. This is what [...] <p>Just thought I&#8217;d throw this out there. I&#8217;ve recently started recording my Android:Netrunner games played with on OCTGN in the very vibrant community that has formed around it. To make things easier for me, I&#8217;ve been streaming directly to twitch.tv and afterwards, for the more interesting games, also exporting them to youtube.</p>
<p>This is what it looks like for now</p>
<p><span class='embed-youtube' style='text-align:center; display: block;'><iframe class='youtube-player' type='text/html' width='640' height='390' src='http://www.youtube.com/embed/rqplp-J9W7g?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;fs=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;wmode=transparent' frameborder='0'></iframe></span></p>
<p>If you&#8217;re interested in catching a look when I&#8217;m playing, <a href="http://www.twitch.tv/dbzer0/">my twitch.tv channel is here</a>, and if you just can&#8217;t get enough A:NR from me only, <a href="http://www.twitch.tv/search?query=Netrunner#stq=Netrunner&amp;stp=1">do a search for &#8220;Netrunner&#8221;</a> and you&#8217;ll find that a few others are starting to do the same as well. I do hope this catches on <img src='http://dbzer0.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif' alt=':D' class='wp-smiley' /> </p>
<p>If you are interested in doing the same thing yourself, it really quite easy. Simply download and install the <a href="http://obsproject.com/">Open Broadcast Software</a> which is free software and thus has no limitations on streaming (I initially tried with some of the things they suggest on twitch.tv, but all of them cost or are limited in some way). To stream OCTGN correctly, make sure you record the whole monitor (trying to record just the OCTGN window doesn&#8217;t work in my experience) and also set it so that it catches layered windows. Record at exactly your monitor&#8217;s resolution to avoid resizing artifacts.</p>
<p>If on the other hand you&#8217;re interested in just seeing the more interesting of my games, you can subscribe to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/db0">my Youtube channel.</a></p>
<p>Apropos youtube channel: In case you haven&#8217;t yet gotten into <a href="http://dbzer0.com/blog/androidnetrunner-on-octgn">Android:Netrunner on OCTGN</a>, I&#8217;ve also made a tutorial video on how to use OCTGN to play, which should take you through all the basics you&#8217;ll need to use the engine efficiently and comfortably to play. If you take a look at my games, you&#8217;ll notice that there is very little fiddling around the engine, which makes playing online very pleasant compared to the usual card game experience.</p>
<p><span class='embed-youtube' style='text-align:center; display: block;'><iframe class='youtube-player' type='text/html' width='640' height='390' src='http://www.youtube.com/embed/nGGECL7nom0?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;fs=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;wmode=transparent' frameborder='0'></iframe></span></p>
<p>Now go forth an run streaming!</p>
<p>Just thought I&#8217;d throw this out there. I&#8217;ve recently started recording my Android:Netrunner games played with on OCTGN in the very vibrant community that has formed around it. To make things easier for me, I&#8217;ve been streaming directly to twitch.tv and afterwards, for the more interesting games, also exporting them to youtube.</p>
<p>This is what it looks like for now</p>
<p><span class='embed-youtube' style='text-align:center; display: block;'><iframe class='youtube-player' type='text/html' width='640' height='390' src='http://www.youtube.com/embed/rqplp-J9W7g?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;fs=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;wmode=transparent' frameborder='0'></iframe></span></p>
<p>If you&#8217;re interested in catching a look when I&#8217;m playing, <a href="http://www.twitch.tv/dbzer0/">my twitch.tv channel is here</a>, and if you just can&#8217;t get enough A:NR from me only, <a href="http://www.twitch.tv/search?query=Netrunner#stq=Netrunner&amp;stp=1">do a search for &#8220;Netrunner&#8221;</a> and you&#8217;ll find that a few others are starting to do the same as well. I do hope this catches on <img src='http://dbzer0.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif' alt=':D' class='wp-smiley' /> </p>
<p>If you are interested in doing the same thing yourself, it really quite easy. Simply download and install the <a href="http://obsproject.com/">Open Broadcast Software</a> which is free software and thus has no limitations on streaming (I initially tried with some of the things they suggest on twitch.tv, but all of them cost or are limited in some way). To stream OCTGN correctly, make sure you record the whole monitor (trying to record just the OCTGN window doesn&#8217;t work in my experience) and also set it so that it catches layered windows. Record at exactly your monitor&#8217;s resolution to avoid resizing artifacts.</p>
<p>If on the other hand you&#8217;re interested in just seeing the more interesting of my games, you can subscribe to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/db0">my Youtube channel.</a></p>
<p>Apropos youtube channel: In case you haven&#8217;t yet gotten into <a href="http://dbzer0.com/blog/androidnetrunner-on-octgn">Android:Netrunner on OCTGN</a>, I&#8217;ve also made a tutorial video on how to use OCTGN to play, which should take you through all the basics you&#8217;ll need to use the engine efficiently and comfortably to play. If you take a look at my games, you&#8217;ll notice that there is very little fiddling around the engine, which makes playing online very pleasant compared to the usual card game experience.</p>
<p><span class='embed-youtube' style='text-align:center; display: block;'><iframe class='youtube-player' type='text/html' width='640' height='390' src='http://www.youtube.com/embed/nGGECL7nom0?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;fs=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;wmode=transparent' frameborder='0'></iframe></span></p>
<p>Now go forth an run streaming!</p>
Why people are annoyed by very strong opinions in online forums.http://dbzer0.com/blog/why-people-are-annoyed-by-very-strong-opinions-in-online-forums/
The Wesnoth Journals » Db0urn:uuid:d4fe2ae7-73bb-33a1-42d1-600bd2fb8879Mon, 11 Feb 2013 08:04:30 +0000Recently I&#8217;ve been getting more and more active in the BoardGameGeek.com community for Android:Netrunner, since I&#8217;m so active in the development of the OCTGN game definition for it, as well as liking the game itself quite a lot. And yesterday a usual event occured that gave me an insight into forum culture. As is common [...] <p>Recently I&#8217;ve been getting more and more active in the <a href="http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/124742/android-netrunner">BoardGameGeek.com community for Android:Netrunner</a>, since I&#8217;m so active in the development of the OCTGN game definition for it, as well as liking the game itself quite a lot. And yesterday a usual event occured that gave me an insight into forum culture.</p>
<p>As is common with geek culture in online communities, some people tend to form strong opinions about various aspects of their hobby and want to share those opinions with others. But sometimes we get to see things heat up a little too much. Apparently randomly, one person will reply rudely to someone known for strong opinions suddenly there&#8217;s an outpouring of negativity against the opinionated player coming from all directions.</p>
<div id="attachment_5143" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 759px"><a href="http://boardgamegeek.com/article/11321956#11321956"><img class=" wp-image-5143 " alt="Someone reacts badly to a strong opinion" src="http://dbzer0.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/negativity-reply.png" width="749" height="293" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Someone reacts badly to a strong opinion</p></div>
<p>The opinionated person is usually taken aback from such hostility as they don&#8217;t understand where it&#8217;s coming from.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://boardgamegeek.com/article/11322698#11322698"><img class=" wp-image-5144 aligncenter" alt="Reaction to negativity" src="http://dbzer0.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/negativity-react.png" width="787" height="204" /></a></p>
<p>I&#8217;ve seen this reaction occur quite frequently, but it usually happens in hobbyist discussions, such as the ones revolving around games. This is because those tend to have a low-impact consequence to a change within them being bad, which makes most moderate people not bother as much with online discussions about them, unless those people are opinionated or bored.</p>
<p>This however means that someone who <em>does</em> react strongly about changes that they perceive to be important, tends to stick out like a sore thumb. Why does someone gets constantly flustered about something as insignificant (in the large scale of things) as a game? And why do people get annoyed at such common reactions?</p>
<p>This hadn&#8217;t actually click for me until today, as I was reading the above exchange and I was also considering that I also felt annoyed every time I saw such strong opinions being posted by the same people. But I couldn&#8217;t put a finger as to why. Why was I irritated about someone taking a card game too seriously?</p>
<p>And then it dawned on me, that I wasn&#8217;t getting annoyed by the opinion itself. I wasn&#8217;t even annoyed by the opinion being put forth as a fact. It was rather the situation that the same people would post the same kind of &#8220;the sky is falling&#8221; commentary every time and then, predictably, others would reply aggressively in to point out why they are completely wrong, which would trigger a discussion that took over most of the thread from that point on.</p>
<p>In short, those posting strong opinions ended up almost always focusing the whole topic on their ideas, &#8220;heating up&#8221; the thread and making the whole discussion revolve around them. It&#8217;s an attention grab! And it&#8217;s this constant attention-seeking that is annoying the people around them, possibly without them realizing the true reason. And thus ending up with random lash-outs like the above screenshot.</p>
<p>I suspect that the people behaving this way do not realize why they are doing it. For them, this is a hobby that they really love and they have strong opinions because they&#8217;d hate to see it ruined by bad decisions. So it&#8217;s understandable that they post those opinions on every relevant discussion and make threads about them, isn&#8217;t it?</p>
<p>It just so happens that this behaviour makes them the superstar of every discussion. Sometimes negatively, sometimes positively, depending on how much they reflect the popular sentiment, but almost always there will be one or more people with an equally strong opinion on the other side who&#8217;ll be annoyed enough at the arrogance or stubbornness to reply likewise, and thus a heated discussion will begin, centering around their comments. And given that humans are social creatures, this is addictive.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s addictive to always be the center of attention, as long as that attention is not overly hostile. So any behaviour that brings about this state of affairs is going to be repeated as long as the reward is reinforced. And given that most people, on both sides, don&#8217;t realize what is going on, is <strong>is</strong> going to be reinforced every time.</p>
<p>And then people in the community are going to start getting annoyed, because it turns out that any thread where particular people comment on (in their usual style), immediately takes a few steps towards flamewar status, and it just so happens that everyone will be discussing those comments for the next few pages, and every other interesting comment will be ignored as those most inflamed by the arguments are going to focus on just that.</p>
<p>So you see this kind of comments, and you grind your teeth, mutter <em>&#8220;Oh it&#8217;s this person again? What horribly wrong opinion do they have to present now?&#8221;</em>. And after months of the same procedure, someone else tells them to <em>&#8220;STFU because nobody cares&#8221;</em> or something, and you think <em>&#8220;Fuck yeah&#8221;</em> and pile on at the opportunity to put them in their place, until the whole thing escalates and feelings are hurt.</p>
<p>I think this whole thing can be quickly de-escalated if people realize the true reason why such comments create a negative attitude. The attention seekers need to stop trying to make the kind of inflammatory comment that will make them the center of discussion, and I believe the way to achieve that is not in random hostility, which is likely not to achieve anything as it&#8217;s vague and misdirected, but to call those people out explicitly for their <em>attention seeking</em> and how that negatively affects the community around them.</p>
<p>Recently I&#8217;ve been getting more and more active in the <a href="http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/124742/android-netrunner">BoardGameGeek.com community for Android:Netrunner</a>, since I&#8217;m so active in the development of the OCTGN game definition for it, as well as liking the game itself quite a lot. And yesterday a usual event occured that gave me an insight into forum culture.</p>
<p>As is common with geek culture in online communities, some people tend to form strong opinions about various aspects of their hobby and want to share those opinions with others. But sometimes we get to see things heat up a little too much. Apparently randomly, one person will reply rudely to someone known for strong opinions suddenly there&#8217;s an outpouring of negativity against the opinionated player coming from all directions.</p>
<div id="attachment_5143" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 759px"><a href="http://boardgamegeek.com/article/11321956#11321956"><img class=" wp-image-5143 " alt="Someone reacts badly to a strong opinion" src="http://dbzer0.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/negativity-reply.png" width="749" height="293" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Someone reacts badly to a strong opinion</p></div>
<p>The opinionated person is usually taken aback from such hostility as they don&#8217;t understand where it&#8217;s coming from.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://boardgamegeek.com/article/11322698#11322698"><img class=" wp-image-5144 aligncenter" alt="Reaction to negativity" src="http://dbzer0.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/negativity-react.png" width="787" height="204" /></a></p>
<p>I&#8217;ve seen this reaction occur quite frequently, but it usually happens in hobbyist discussions, such as the ones revolving around games. This is because those tend to have a low-impact consequence to a change within them being bad, which makes most moderate people not bother as much with online discussions about them, unless those people are opinionated or bored.</p>
<p>This however means that someone who <em>does</em> react strongly about changes that they perceive to be important, tends to stick out like a sore thumb. Why does someone gets constantly flustered about something as insignificant (in the large scale of things) as a game? And why do people get annoyed at such common reactions?</p>
<p>This hadn&#8217;t actually click for me until today, as I was reading the above exchange and I was also considering that I also felt annoyed every time I saw such strong opinions being posted by the same people. But I couldn&#8217;t put a finger as to why. Why was I irritated about someone taking a card game too seriously?</p>
<p>And then it dawned on me, that I wasn&#8217;t getting annoyed by the opinion itself. I wasn&#8217;t even annoyed by the opinion being put forth as a fact. It was rather the situation that the same people would post the same kind of &#8220;the sky is falling&#8221; commentary every time and then, predictably, others would reply aggressively in to point out why they are completely wrong, which would trigger a discussion that took over most of the thread from that point on.</p>
<p>In short, those posting strong opinions ended up almost always focusing the whole topic on their ideas, &#8220;heating up&#8221; the thread and making the whole discussion revolve around them. It&#8217;s an attention grab! And it&#8217;s this constant attention-seeking that is annoying the people around them, possibly without them realizing the true reason. And thus ending up with random lash-outs like the above screenshot.</p>
<p>I suspect that the people behaving this way do not realize why they are doing it. For them, this is a hobby that they really love and they have strong opinions because they&#8217;d hate to see it ruined by bad decisions. So it&#8217;s understandable that they post those opinions on every relevant discussion and make threads about them, isn&#8217;t it?</p>
<p>It just so happens that this behaviour makes them the superstar of every discussion. Sometimes negatively, sometimes positively, depending on how much they reflect the popular sentiment, but almost always there will be one or more people with an equally strong opinion on the other side who&#8217;ll be annoyed enough at the arrogance or stubbornness to reply likewise, and thus a heated discussion will begin, centering around their comments. And given that humans are social creatures, this is addictive.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s addictive to always be the center of attention, as long as that attention is not overly hostile. So any behaviour that brings about this state of affairs is going to be repeated as long as the reward is reinforced. And given that most people, on both sides, don&#8217;t realize what is going on, is <strong>is</strong> going to be reinforced every time.</p>
<p>And then people in the community are going to start getting annoyed, because it turns out that any thread where particular people comment on (in their usual style), immediately takes a few steps towards flamewar status, and it just so happens that everyone will be discussing those comments for the next few pages, and every other interesting comment will be ignored as those most inflamed by the arguments are going to focus on just that.</p>
<p>So you see this kind of comments, and you grind your teeth, mutter <em>&#8220;Oh it&#8217;s this person again? What horribly wrong opinion do they have to present now?&#8221;</em>. And after months of the same procedure, someone else tells them to <em>&#8220;STFU because nobody cares&#8221;</em> or something, and you think <em>&#8220;Fuck yeah&#8221;</em> and pile on at the opportunity to put them in their place, until the whole thing escalates and feelings are hurt.</p>
<p>I think this whole thing can be quickly de-escalated if people realize the true reason why such comments create a negative attitude. The attention seekers need to stop trying to make the kind of inflammatory comment that will make them the center of discussion, and I believe the way to achieve that is not in random hostility, which is likely not to achieve anything as it&#8217;s vague and misdirected, but to call those people out explicitly for their <em>attention seeking</em> and how that negatively affects the community around them.</p>
Android:Netrunner – Full Tutorialhttp://dbzer0.com/blog/androidnetrunner-full-tutorial/
The Wesnoth Journals » Db0urn:uuid:2cba2335-fec8-b161-8933-b7eae8b5295bTue, 05 Feb 2013 11:34:20 +0000Fantasy Flight has released a great video explaining the basics of Android:Netrunner and taking you through the first three turns of an average game. The production values here are really top notch and it&#8217;s very enjoyable to watch, even for someone who already knows the game. If you&#8217;re interested in seeing what the big fuss [...] <p>Fantasy Flight has released a great video explaining the basics of Android:Netrunner and taking you through the first three turns of an average game. The production values here are really top notch and it&#8217;s very enjoyable to watch, even for someone who already knows the game.</p>
<p><span class='embed-youtube' style='text-align:center; display: block;'><iframe class='youtube-player' type='text/html' width='640' height='390' src='http://www.youtube.com/embed/VAslVfZ9p-Y?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;fs=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;wmode=transparent' frameborder='0'></iframe></span></p>
<p>If you&#8217;re interested in seeing what the big fuss is about and how can this game remain a cult classic after dying in the late 90s and then topping the BGG charts mere months after being revived a decade later, check this video, and see why the gameplay is so amazingly good.</p>
<p>And once you&#8217;ve done this, <a href="http://dbzer0.com/blog/androidnetrunner-on-octgn">log onto OCTGN and try out a few games for yourself</a>.</p>
<p>Believe the hype!</p>
<p>Fantasy Flight has released a great video explaining the basics of Android:Netrunner and taking you through the first three turns of an average game. The production values here are really top notch and it&#8217;s very enjoyable to watch, even for someone who already knows the game.</p>
<p><span class='embed-youtube' style='text-align:center; display: block;'><iframe class='youtube-player' type='text/html' width='640' height='390' src='http://www.youtube.com/embed/VAslVfZ9p-Y?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;fs=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;wmode=transparent' frameborder='0'></iframe></span></p>
<p>If you&#8217;re interested in seeing what the big fuss is about and how can this game remain a cult classic after dying in the late 90s and then topping the BGG charts mere months after being revived a decade later, check this video, and see why the gameplay is so amazingly good.</p>
<p>And once you&#8217;ve done this, <a href="http://dbzer0.com/blog/androidnetrunner-on-octgn">log onto OCTGN and try out a few games for yourself</a>.</p>
<p>Believe the hype!</p>
"On the other hand, we "stabilise" countries when we invade them and destroy them."http://dbzer0.com/blog/on-the-other-hand-we-stabilise-countries-when-we-invade-them-and-destroy-them/
The Wesnoth Journals » Db0urn:uuid:45fd9e5f-063c-cd17-f4a6-14eb43232d75Tue, 05 Feb 2013 11:21:56 +0000Noam Chomsky is spot on the money once again Go and read <p><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/04/us-control-diminishing-own-world">Noam Chomsky is spot on the money once again</a></p>
<p>Go and read</p>
<p><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/04/us-control-diminishing-own-world">Noam Chomsky is spot on the money once again</a></p>
<p>Go and read</p>
Is the reason why anarchism is still not the norm because humans aren't yet ready for it?http://dbzer0.com/blog/is-the-reason-why-anarchism-is-still-not-the-norm-because-humans-arent-yet-ready-for-it/
The Wesnoth Journals » Db0urn:uuid:3fa498e0-3fe0-1bbe-af2c-ff61e13e3899Sun, 03 Feb 2013 09:50:10 +0000This is a question posted in the /r/anarchism101 subreddit which is a common misconception about what anarchists suggest Is the reason why anarchism is still not the norm because humans aren&#8217;t yet ready for it? If so, then what the fuck use is an ideology that can&#8217;t be applied to humans? I want to think [...] <p>This is a question posted in the /r/anarchism101 subreddit which is a common misconception about what anarchists suggest</p>
<blockquote><p><a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/Anarchy101/comments/17su38/is_the_reason_why_anarchism_is_still_not_the_norm/">Is the reason why anarchism is still not the norm because humans aren&#8217;t yet ready for it? If so, then what the fuck use is an ideology that can&#8217;t be applied to humans?</a></p>
<p>I want to think of anarchism as a description for what is wrong and what needs to be plucked out, but once I think of its implementation I can&#8217;t help but to think it doesn&#8217;t fit humans as a whole. We need to rise intellectually before it can be applied. Right?</p></blockquote>
<p>So here&#8217;s a chance to address this quickly</p>
<div>
<div>
<blockquote><p>Is the reason why anarchism is still not the norm because humans aren&#8217;t yet ready for it?</p></blockquote>
<p>No. Anarchism is the most compatible with what anthropology and psychology tells us about humans social relations. The problem is that the environment you live in (i.e. society) <a href="http://dbzer0.com/blog/what-would-an-anarchist-society-look-like">shapes what things you accept</a> and humans have been either too conditioned by hundreds of years of coercion and violence to accept capitalist values, such as wage slavery, or actively prevented from seeking the alternative even now.</p>
<p>Most humans would gladly shake off capitalist concepts of work and wage and exploitation given half the chance, but those who have the most benefit in doing so (the poor in other countries) are actively repressed by violence funded by their exploiters (the rich and middle class of rich countries). In turn, the middle class and the poor of the richer counties are palliated by the crumbs from the theft which occurs wholescale in the rest of the world, so that they don&#8217;t rise up. And when the palliatives fail, actual violence is again employed.</p>
</div>
</div>
<p>This is a question posted in the /r/anarchism101 subreddit which is a common misconception about what anarchists suggest</p>
<blockquote><p><a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/Anarchy101/comments/17su38/is_the_reason_why_anarchism_is_still_not_the_norm/">Is the reason why anarchism is still not the norm because humans aren&#8217;t yet ready for it? If so, then what the fuck use is an ideology that can&#8217;t be applied to humans?</a></p>
<p>I want to think of anarchism as a description for what is wrong and what needs to be plucked out, but once I think of its implementation I can&#8217;t help but to think it doesn&#8217;t fit humans as a whole. We need to rise intellectually before it can be applied. Right?</p></blockquote>
<p>So here&#8217;s a chance to address this quickly</p>
<div>
<div>
<blockquote><p>Is the reason why anarchism is still not the norm because humans aren&#8217;t yet ready for it?</p></blockquote>
<p>No. Anarchism is the most compatible with what anthropology and psychology tells us about humans social relations. The problem is that the environment you live in (i.e. society) <a href="http://dbzer0.com/blog/what-would-an-anarchist-society-look-like">shapes what things you accept</a> and humans have been either too conditioned by hundreds of years of coercion and violence to accept capitalist values, such as wage slavery, or actively prevented from seeking the alternative even now.</p>
<p>Most humans would gladly shake off capitalist concepts of work and wage and exploitation given half the chance, but those who have the most benefit in doing so (the poor in other countries) are actively repressed by violence funded by their exploiters (the rich and middle class of rich countries). In turn, the middle class and the poor of the richer counties are palliated by the crumbs from the theft which occurs wholescale in the rest of the world, so that they don&#8217;t rise up. And when the palliatives fail, actual violence is again employed.</p>
</div>
</div>
Apparently ChristianDatingSites.net wants Antichristians as affiliates.http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/db0/apparently-christiandatingsites-net-wants-antichristians-as-affiliates
The Antichristian Phenomenon » Db0urn:uuid:172b136a-f726-00cf-94fa-f0cf72ea7abaWed, 25 Jan 2012 12:23:45 +0000&#1093;&#1091;&#1076;&#1086;&#1078;&#1085;&#1080;&#1082; &#1085;&#1072; &#1080;&#1082;&#1086;&#1085;&#1080;So, yesterday I received this email: Hi, My name is Cindy and I&#8217;m the owner of ChristianDatingSites.net&#8211;would you take a look at my site and consider possibly listing it as a resource on your website? ChristianDatingSites.net is the only website exclusively devoted to Christian singles who want reliable information about avoiding the financial [...] <p><font style="position: absolute;overflow: hidden;height: 0;width: 0"><a href="http://xn--h1aafme.net/%E7%E0-%E0%E2%F2%EE%F0%E0">&#1093;&#1091;&#1076;&#1086;&#1078;&#1085;&#1080;&#1082; &#1085;&#1072; &#1080;&#1082;&#1086;&#1085;&#1080;</a></font>So, yesterday I received this email:</p>
<blockquote><p>Hi,</p>
<p>My name is Cindy and I&#8217;m the owner of ChristianDatingSites.net&#8211;would you take a look at my site and consider possibly listing it as a resource on your website?</p>
<p>ChristianDatingSites.net is the only website exclusively devoted to Christian singles who want reliable information about avoiding the financial and physical dangers inherent in using online dating, serving our readers by authoring articles on topics like how to identify dating site scams and how to deal with one if you fall victim.</p>
<p>Please take a look at ChristianDatingSites.net, and if you agree that it&#8217;s a valuable resource, perhaps consider adding a link to it from your site?</p>
<p>Thank you in advance for your consideration,<span style="color: #888888;"></p>
<p>Cindy McDonald<br />
Blogger | Owner</span></p></blockquote>
<p>Cindy, my dear, consider your wish granted. We, the devoted antichristians of the net would love to endorse ChristianDatingSites.net wholheartedly. All Antichristians should consider this as their first stop if they ever consider christian dating given the recently converted nature of its owner: Cindy the Antichristian. <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/embrace-enlightenment">Welcome to enlightenment my sister</a>.</p>
<p>I know, I know, it might come as something of a shock to the previous audience of ChristianDatingSites.net, but such are the realities when one finally wakes up to the nonsense of the Christian belief system. I&#8217;m sure Cindy&#8217;s recent deconvertion will not affect her professional conduct in her role as webmaster and that is certainly shown by her rational choice to contact The Antichristian Phenomenon to list her as a valuable resource.</p>
<p>We hear and we acknowledge Cindy! <em></em>Of course, we do not expect that you link immediately back to the ACP, as that might alienate your readers, but I&#8217;m sure you have plans to slowly <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/spreading-anti-christianity">spread more and more antichristianity</a> and when the time comes, a proper link back to us will be provided. Until then, feel free to copy some of our texts for covert dissemination to your audience. <em>Wink,wink.</em></p>
<p>For all our christian readers out there, you can now see they the ACP is the <a href="http://www.bloggerschoiceawards.com/blogs/show/52032/?utm_source=bloggerschoiceawards&amp;utm_medium=badge&amp;utm_content=bestreligionblog">top religious blog on the net</a>, when even Christians reach out to us for endorsements.</p>
<p>Tell your friends.</p>
<ht />More Antichristianity: <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/waldheri/faq-finally-up" rel="bookmark" title="June 22, 2008">FAQ finally up</a>
| <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/db0/a-small-pwnage" rel="bookmark" title="August 5, 2008">A small pwnage</a>
| <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/admin/theme-update" rel="bookmark" title="June 2, 2007">Theme update</a>
<!-- Similar Posts took 9.288 ms --><p><font style="position: absolute;overflow: hidden;height: 0;width: 0"><a href="http://xn--h1aafme.net/%E7%E0-%E0%E2%F2%EE%F0%E0">&#1093;&#1091;&#1076;&#1086;&#1078;&#1085;&#1080;&#1082; &#1085;&#1072; &#1080;&#1082;&#1086;&#1085;&#1080;</a></font>So, yesterday I received this email:</p>
<blockquote><p>Hi,</p>
<p>My name is Cindy and I&#8217;m the owner of ChristianDatingSites.net&#8211;would you take a look at my site and consider possibly listing it as a resource on your website?</p>
<p>ChristianDatingSites.net is the only website exclusively devoted to Christian singles who want reliable information about avoiding the financial and physical dangers inherent in using online dating, serving our readers by authoring articles on topics like how to identify dating site scams and how to deal with one if you fall victim.</p>
<p>Please take a look at ChristianDatingSites.net, and if you agree that it&#8217;s a valuable resource, perhaps consider adding a link to it from your site?</p>
<p>Thank you in advance for your consideration,<span style="color: #888888;"></p>
<p>Cindy McDonald<br />
Blogger | Owner</span></p></blockquote>
<p>Cindy, my dear, consider your wish granted. We, the devoted antichristians of the net would love to endorse ChristianDatingSites.net wholheartedly. All Antichristians should consider this as their first stop if they ever consider christian dating given the recently converted nature of its owner: Cindy the Antichristian. <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/embrace-enlightenment">Welcome to enlightenment my sister</a>.</p>
<p>I know, I know, it might come as something of a shock to the previous audience of ChristianDatingSites.net, but such are the realities when one finally wakes up to the nonsense of the Christian belief system. I&#8217;m sure Cindy&#8217;s recent deconvertion will not affect her professional conduct in her role as webmaster and that is certainly shown by her rational choice to contact The Antichristian Phenomenon to list her as a valuable resource.</p>
<p>We hear and we acknowledge Cindy! <em></em>Of course, we do not expect that you link immediately back to the ACP, as that might alienate your readers, but I&#8217;m sure you have plans to slowly <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/spreading-anti-christianity">spread more and more antichristianity</a> and when the time comes, a proper link back to us will be provided. Until then, feel free to copy some of our texts for covert dissemination to your audience. <em>Wink,wink.</em></p>
<p>For all our christian readers out there, you can now see they the ACP is the <a href="http://www.bloggerschoiceawards.com/blogs/show/52032/?utm_source=bloggerschoiceawards&amp;utm_medium=badge&amp;utm_content=bestreligionblog">top religious blog on the net</a>, when even Christians reach out to us for endorsements.</p>
<p>Tell your friends.</p>
<ht />More Antichristianity: <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/waldheri/faq-finally-up" rel="bookmark" title="June 22, 2008">FAQ finally up</a>
| <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/db0/a-small-pwnage" rel="bookmark" title="August 5, 2008">A small pwnage</a>
| <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/admin/theme-update" rel="bookmark" title="June 2, 2007">Theme update</a>
<!-- Similar Posts took 9.288 ms -->Your religion breeds this shithttp://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/db0/your-religion-breeds-this-shit
The Antichristian Phenomenon » Db0urn:uuid:d904834f-102f-87e4-b201-74f8a971ff54Mon, 05 Sep 2011 08:49:10 +0000&#1080;&#1082;&#1086;&#1085;&#1080;I found this blog the other day through reddit, which is basically daily stories from &#8220;escorts&#8221; to abortion clinics. That is : People who go to abortion clinics and escort clients towards the door, in order to support them from the onslaught of harassment from the anti-abortion protesting crowds which are forming a gauntlet around [...] <p><font style="position: absolute;overflow: hidden;height: 0;width: 0"><a href="http://ikoni.eu/ikoni">&#1080;&#1082;&#1086;&#1085;&#1080;</a></font>I found <a href="http://everysaturdaymorning.wordpress.com/">this blog</a> the other day through reddit, which is basically daily stories from &#8220;escorts&#8221; to abortion clinics. That is : People who go to abortion clinics and escort clients towards the door, in order to support them from the onslaught of harassment from the anti-abortion protesting crowds which are forming a gauntlet around the pavement. And all these people are predominantly christians.</p>
<p>And then I read <a href="http://everysaturdaymorning.wordpress.com/2011/03/19/i-do-not-apologize-on-the-sidewalk-with-fml/">stories like this</a></p>
<blockquote><p>But at one point she turned to face her tormenters -</p>
<p>who were mouthing their usual – “don’t let your baby die – if you need money, we’ll give you money – we love you, we’ll do anything, anything, let someone adopt your baby, please, please, please…”</p>
<p>and she told them her baby was already dead</p>
<p>She told them, through sobs, that she carried one baby til it was born dead and she couldn’t do that again.</p>
<p>Wouldn’t you think they’d have shut up and left her alone? In the face of her pain at having to go through this, wouldn’t you think they’d have backed off?</p>
<p>No.</p>
<p>Instead, they continued to tell her <strong><em>not to kill </em><em>her already dead baby</em></strong>.</p>
<p>Really.</p></blockquote>
<p>Fuck. This. Shit!</p>
<p>Fuck it sideways with a jagged screwdriver.</p>
<p>Christians in the so called 1rst world, like to think that they are better than the religious nutters in places like backward Muslim countries. But the only difference is that they&#8217;ve replaced physical abuse with emotional abuse at every opportunity. Especially against vulnerable targets, such as women making some of the most difficult choices in their lives.</p>
<p>And to top it off, <a href="http://mypage.direct.ca/w/writer/anti-tales.html">they are monumental hypocrites to boot</a>.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s this kind of thing that reminds me just why exactly I became an Anti-Christian.</p>
<ht />More Antichristianity: <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/db0/more-of-that-shit" rel="bookmark" title="July 26, 2007">More of that shit!</a>
| <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/db0/the-most-depressing-story-about-faith-healing-youll-read" rel="bookmark" title="June 4, 2010">The most depressing story about Faith Healing you&#8217;ll read</a>
| <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/db0/on-respect-post-%ce%b2-the-hunted-knight" rel="bookmark" title="July 5, 2007">On Respect (Post Β) &#8211; The Hunted Knight</a>
<!-- Similar Posts took 10.925 ms --><p><font style="position: absolute;overflow: hidden;height: 0;width: 0"><a href="http://ikoni.eu/ikoni">&#1080;&#1082;&#1086;&#1085;&#1080;</a></font>I found <a href="http://everysaturdaymorning.wordpress.com/">this blog</a> the other day through reddit, which is basically daily stories from &#8220;escorts&#8221; to abortion clinics. That is : People who go to abortion clinics and escort clients towards the door, in order to support them from the onslaught of harassment from the anti-abortion protesting crowds which are forming a gauntlet around the pavement. And all these people are predominantly christians.</p>
<p>And then I read <a href="http://everysaturdaymorning.wordpress.com/2011/03/19/i-do-not-apologize-on-the-sidewalk-with-fml/">stories like this</a></p>
<blockquote><p>But at one point she turned to face her tormenters -</p>
<p>who were mouthing their usual – “don’t let your baby die – if you need money, we’ll give you money – we love you, we’ll do anything, anything, let someone adopt your baby, please, please, please…”</p>
<p>and she told them her baby was already dead</p>
<p>She told them, through sobs, that she carried one baby til it was born dead and she couldn’t do that again.</p>
<p>Wouldn’t you think they’d have shut up and left her alone? In the face of her pain at having to go through this, wouldn’t you think they’d have backed off?</p>
<p>No.</p>
<p>Instead, they continued to tell her <strong><em>not to kill </em><em>her already dead baby</em></strong>.</p>
<p>Really.</p></blockquote>
<p>Fuck. This. Shit!</p>
<p>Fuck it sideways with a jagged screwdriver.</p>
<p>Christians in the so called 1rst world, like to think that they are better than the religious nutters in places like backward Muslim countries. But the only difference is that they&#8217;ve replaced physical abuse with emotional abuse at every opportunity. Especially against vulnerable targets, such as women making some of the most difficult choices in their lives.</p>
<p>And to top it off, <a href="http://mypage.direct.ca/w/writer/anti-tales.html">they are monumental hypocrites to boot</a>.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s this kind of thing that reminds me just why exactly I became an Anti-Christian.</p>
<ht />More Antichristianity: <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/db0/more-of-that-shit" rel="bookmark" title="July 26, 2007">More of that shit!</a>
| <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/db0/the-most-depressing-story-about-faith-healing-youll-read" rel="bookmark" title="June 4, 2010">The most depressing story about Faith Healing you&#8217;ll read</a>
| <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/db0/on-respect-post-%ce%b2-the-hunted-knight" rel="bookmark" title="July 5, 2007">On Respect (Post Β) &#8211; The Hunted Knight</a>
<!-- Similar Posts took 10.925 ms -->How to respond to a "Used-to-be-an-Atheist"http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/db0/how-to-respond-to-a-used-to-be-an-atheist
The Antichristian Phenomenon » Db0urn:uuid:dce4638a-4276-a784-17df-ce1be88b684eFri, 18 Feb 2011 15:45:42 +0000&#1084;&#1077;&#1082;&#1072; &#1084;&#1077;&#1073;&#1077;&#1083;A repost from reddit, in a fail-proof reply to those Theists that love to bring up how they &#8220;used to be an atheist when I was young too&#8221;. Hebrews 6:4-8 &#8220;It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who [...] <p><font style="position: absolute;overflow: hidden;height: 0;width: 0"><a href="http://www.videnov.com/">&#1084;&#1077;&#1082;&#1072; &#1084;&#1077;&#1073;&#1077;&#1083;</a></font><a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/fnvbo/my_failproof_response_to_any_used_to_be_atheist/">A repost from reddit</a>, in a fail-proof reply to those Theists that love to bring up how they &#8220;used to be an atheist when I was young too&#8221;.</p>
<blockquote>
<div>
<div>
<p>Hebrews 6:4-8</p>
<p>&#8220;<strong>It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened</strong>, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age <strong>and who have fallen away, to be brought back to repentance.</strong> To their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace. Land that drinks in the rain often falling on it and that produces a crop useful to those for whom it is farmed receives the blessing of God. But land that produces thorns and thistles is worthless and is in danger of being cursed. <strong>In the end it will be burned.</strong>&#8221;</p>
<p>100% of the time, I hear back. &#8220;I didn&#8217;t know that. Well, I don&#8217;t believe that part.&#8221; So, of course my response is, &#8220;We&#8217;re in agreement then; I don&#8217;t believe the part that says I&#8217;m going to Hell either.&#8221;</p>
<p>I&#8217;ve never seen someone recover. Enjoy!</p>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p>Now go forth and pwn.</p>
<ht />More Antichristianity: <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/db0/some-answers" rel="bookmark" title="June 8, 2009">Some answers</a>
| <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/leat/why-i-dont-want-to-die-err-not-really" rel="bookmark" title="January 12, 2009">Why I don&#8217;t want to die!!!!!! &#8230;Err, not really</a>
| <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/anath/national-day-of-tgroupspeak" rel="bookmark" title="May 6, 2010">National Day of Groupspeak</a>
<!-- Similar Posts took 10.963 ms --><p><font style="position: absolute;overflow: hidden;height: 0;width: 0"><a href="http://www.videnov.com/">&#1084;&#1077;&#1082;&#1072; &#1084;&#1077;&#1073;&#1077;&#1083;</a></font><a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/fnvbo/my_failproof_response_to_any_used_to_be_atheist/">A repost from reddit</a>, in a fail-proof reply to those Theists that love to bring up how they &#8220;used to be an atheist when I was young too&#8221;.</p>
<blockquote>
<div>
<div>
<p>Hebrews 6:4-8</p>
<p>&#8220;<strong>It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened</strong>, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age <strong>and who have fallen away, to be brought back to repentance.</strong> To their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace. Land that drinks in the rain often falling on it and that produces a crop useful to those for whom it is farmed receives the blessing of God. But land that produces thorns and thistles is worthless and is in danger of being cursed. <strong>In the end it will be burned.</strong>&#8221;</p>
<p>100% of the time, I hear back. &#8220;I didn&#8217;t know that. Well, I don&#8217;t believe that part.&#8221; So, of course my response is, &#8220;We&#8217;re in agreement then; I don&#8217;t believe the part that says I&#8217;m going to Hell either.&#8221;</p>
<p>I&#8217;ve never seen someone recover. Enjoy!</p>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p>Now go forth and pwn.</p>
<ht />More Antichristianity: <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/db0/some-answers" rel="bookmark" title="June 8, 2009">Some answers</a>
| <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/leat/why-i-dont-want-to-die-err-not-really" rel="bookmark" title="January 12, 2009">Why I don&#8217;t want to die!!!!!! &#8230;Err, not really</a>
| <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/anath/national-day-of-tgroupspeak" rel="bookmark" title="May 6, 2010">National Day of Groupspeak</a>
<!-- Similar Posts took 10.963 ms -->Cleaning Uphttp://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/db0/cleaning-up
The Antichristian Phenomenon » Db0urn:uuid:9d09ff75-2322-9a2b-0edd-addbe62c5199Tue, 18 Jan 2011 23:56:18 +0000Subscriber holocaust <p>OK, I&#8217;ve made registration to the ACP a bit more difficult because a lot of spam accounts were being registered. You now <em>need</em> the invitation code you can find at the &#8220;Embrace Enlightenment&#8221; page. Hopefully this will deter automated registrations.</p>
<p>I&#8217;ve also deleted the 140 subscriber accounts that were on the ACP. People, you are supposed to create an account only if you want to contribute to the blog. And if you want to do that, you&#8217;re supposed to email the admins once you register (Again, check the &#8220;Embrace Enlightenment&#8221; page)</p>
<p>That is all.</p>
<ht />More Antichristianity: <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/admin/welcome-to-the-beta" rel="bookmark" title="May 19, 2007">Welcome to the beta</a>
| <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/db0/member-pages" rel="bookmark" title="June 21, 2008">Member Pages</a>
| <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/waldheri/faq-finally-up" rel="bookmark" title="June 22, 2008">FAQ finally up</a>
<!-- Similar Posts took 168.298 ms --><p>OK, I&#8217;ve made registration to the ACP a bit more difficult because a lot of spam accounts were being registered. You now <em>need</em> the invitation code you can find at the &#8220;Embrace Enlightenment&#8221; page. Hopefully this will deter automated registrations.</p>
<p>I&#8217;ve also deleted the 140 subscriber accounts that were on the ACP. People, you are supposed to create an account only if you want to contribute to the blog. And if you want to do that, you&#8217;re supposed to email the admins once you register (Again, check the &#8220;Embrace Enlightenment&#8221; page)</p>
<p>That is all.</p>
<ht />More Antichristianity: <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/admin/welcome-to-the-beta" rel="bookmark" title="May 19, 2007">Welcome to the beta</a>
| <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/db0/member-pages" rel="bookmark" title="June 21, 2008">Member Pages</a>
| <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/waldheri/faq-finally-up" rel="bookmark" title="June 22, 2008">FAQ finally up</a>
<!-- Similar Posts took 168.298 ms -->Yahweh or the Highway!http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/db0/yahweh-or-the-highway
The Antichristian Phenomenon » Db0urn:uuid:3a299dd2-4275-727d-ca92-4d37a0851717Wed, 08 Dec 2010 10:29:58 +0000Yahweh was truly a badass. <p>Just found <a href="http://imgur.com/a/3yK8a">this little gem in reddit</a>. It&#8217;s a comic about the true story of the Christian God, as the church does not want you to see. I can&#8217;t accurately express how awesome it is <img src='http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif' alt=':)' class='wp-smiley' /> </p>
<p>It&#8217;s apparently a comic from <a href="http://www.comicsbulletin.com/reviews/119670193111057.htm">Doc Frankensten</a> so this will be a very nice giftmas gift for your antichristian friends <img src='http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif' alt=';)' class='wp-smiley' /> </p>
<ht />More Antichristianity: <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/db0/how-to-respond-to-a-used-to-be-an-atheist" rel="bookmark" title="February 18, 2011">How to respond to a &quot;Used-to-be-an-Atheist&quot;</a>
| <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/db0/new-year-journal-roundup" rel="bookmark" title="January 12, 2009">New Year Journal Roundup</a>
| <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/db0/journal-roundup" rel="bookmark" title="February 8, 2008">Journal Roundup</a>
<!-- Similar Posts took 172.065 ms --><p>Just found <a href="http://imgur.com/a/3yK8a">this little gem in reddit</a>. It&#8217;s a comic about the true story of the Christian God, as the church does not want you to see. I can&#8217;t accurately express how awesome it is <img src='http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif' alt=':)' class='wp-smiley' /> </p>
<p>It&#8217;s apparently a comic from <a href="http://www.comicsbulletin.com/reviews/119670193111057.htm">Doc Frankensten</a> so this will be a very nice giftmas gift for your antichristian friends <img src='http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif' alt=';)' class='wp-smiley' /> </p>
<ht />More Antichristianity: <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/db0/how-to-respond-to-a-used-to-be-an-atheist" rel="bookmark" title="February 18, 2011">How to respond to a &quot;Used-to-be-an-Atheist&quot;</a>
| <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/db0/new-year-journal-roundup" rel="bookmark" title="January 12, 2009">New Year Journal Roundup</a>
| <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/db0/journal-roundup" rel="bookmark" title="February 8, 2008">Journal Roundup</a>
<!-- Similar Posts took 172.065 ms -->Bible Multiple Choicehttp://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/db0/bible-multiple-choice
The Antichristian Phenomenon » Db0urn:uuid:9a82fe71-e723-03be-c91a-7cf7159b2a86Tue, 03 Aug 2010 13:11:28 +0000Do you consider yourself a Christian. Do you think you know the bible? Take this test to prove you're not a sinner! <p>I just saw <a href="http://breadfan.tumblr.com/post/126696009">this Greek post</a> on making a multiple choice test in the Bible that I thought was brilliant and I couldn&#8217;t help but repost the translated version.</p>
<p>The following is basically a little test to see if you still remember the Good Book and all the nice values it has provided to you. Use it in case you need to freshen up your memory, to test if you children are paying attention in School and so on.</p>
<p>Try to figure out which are the correct answers and see how close to inspired perfection you stand. One of the following questions has more than one answer. Can you tell which one?</p>
<p>Good Luck!</p>
<ol>
<li><em>A Few children were making fun of Prophet Elisha as he was going up a mountain, shouting at him &#8220;Get up baldie!&#8221;. Elisha&#8230; </em>
<p>a) Cut the ears of 42 of them and made them eat them.<br />
b) Cursed them so that a fire broke out around them, burning 42 of the kids.<br />
c) Cursed them so that two bears came out of the woods and mauled 42 of them.<br />
d) Turned 42 of them into pigs.</p>
<ul></ul>
</li>
<li><em>What is the 10th Commandment that God gave to Moses to write on two stone plates in the Mount Sina </em>
<p>a) Do not put one ox and one mule in the same field.<br />
b) Do not cook a kid (baby goat) in the milk of it&#8217;s mother.<br />
c) Do not sleep with a deaf-mute so that you don&#8217;t turn into a deaf-mute yourself.<br />
d) Do not open you house&#8217;s door to idol worshippers.</p>
<ul></ul>
</li>
<li><em>What is the name of God? </em>
<p>a) Whiner.<br />
b) Cheater.<br />
c) Jealous.<br />
d) Naughty.</p>
<ul></ul>
</li>
<li><em>How should parents kill their son in case he&#8217;s drinking and talking back to them?</em>
<p>a) Implate him.<br />
b) Stone him.<br />
c) Burn him alive.<br />
d) Decapitate him.</p>
<ul></ul>
</li>
<li><em>What happens if you&#8217;re not a (female) virgin on the first night of marriage? </em>
<p>a) Your father must pay the husband 100 pail.<br />
b) Your husband whips you and then divorces you.<br />
c) You&#8217;re stoned to death.<br />
d) The whole village spits on you.</p>
<ul></ul>
</li>
<li><em>What is explicitly allowed to be eaten according to the Holy Writ? (All others are explicitly forbidden) </em>
<p>a) Fried Oysters.<br />
b) Rabbit stew.<br />
c) Lemon Pork.<br />
d) Grasshoppers with ketchup.</p>
<ul></ul>
</li>
<li><em>According to the Holy Writ, God cannot defea</em>t
<p>a) Those who have iron chariots.<br />
b) Those who have iron spears.<br />
c) Those who have iron swords.<br />
d) Those who have iron bows.</p>
<ul></ul>
</li>
<li><em>When Jephthah came victorious from battle, what did he burn on the alter as an offerring to God? </em>
<p>a) His only son.<br />
b) His only daughter.<br />
c) His two small grandchildren.<br />
d) His wife.</p>
<ul></ul>
</li>
<li><em>What did David offer to Kind Saul so that he would get his daughter? </em>
<p>a) The heads of 200 Phillistines.<br />
b) The dicks of 200 Phillistines.<br />
c) The testicles of 200 Phillistines.<br />
d) The penis skins of 200 Phillistines.</p>
<ul></ul>
</li>
<li><em>For what reason did God torture Job?</em>
<p>a) Because God was bored and had nothing to do.<br />
b) Because Satan challenged him to destroy him for no reason.<br />
c) Because Job ate raw meat.<br />
d) Because Job forgot to use incense.</p>
<ul></ul>
</li>
<li><em>How does God punish pretentious women? </em>
<p>a) He makes them bald, and exposes their cunt.<br />
b) He makes them full of zits, and exposes their tits.<br />
c) He makes them full of sores, and exposes their thighs.<br />
d) He makes the grow a beard, and exposes their arse.</p>
<ul></ul>
</li>
<li><em>What is the punishment for the lame? </em>
<p>a) Do not approach the holy so that they do not desecrate them.<br />
b) They must pay double the tax as the healthy.<br />
c) The must burn double the amount of animals during sacrifices.<br />
d) They are not allowed to eat bread.</p>
<ul></ul>
</li>
<li><em>Which Christmas tradition is forbidden by God? </em>
<p>a) Sing Christmas carols for money.<br />
b) Giving gifts.<br />
c) Decorating a tree.<br />
d) Eat turkey.</p>
<ul></ul>
</li>
<li><em>What did Jesus suggest people do, if they can tolerate it? </em>
<p>a) Self-flaggelate<br />
b) Become a eunuch.<br />
c) Rip out their eyes.<br />
d) Stay unmarried.</p>
<ul></ul>
</li>
<li><em>Hare, according to the Holy Writ is: </em>
<p>a) Marsupial<br />
b) Reptile<br />
c) Ruminant<br />
d) Predatory</p>
<ul></ul>
</li>
<li><em>How do we make animals with dots? </em>
<p>a) We make them wear tunics with dots which can get discoloured, and leave them in the rain.<br />
b) We make them look things with dots while they&#8217;re drinking water.<br />
c) We throw them on the coals and take them immediately off them again.<br />
d) We make them stand under thinly grown Garlands every noon.</p>
<ul></ul>
</li>
<li><em>According to the Holy Writ, feeling come from&#8230; </em>
<p>a) The intestines<br />
b) The stomach<br />
c) The liver<br />
d) The kidneys</p>
<ul></ul>
</li>
<li><em>Which from the following creatures appears in the Holy Writ?</em>
<p>a) Unicorn<br />
b) Dragon<br />
c) Basilisk<br />
d) Satyr</p>
<ul></ul>
</li>
<li><em>When Jesus dies, which from the following miracles happened? </em>
<p>a) A rain of blood fell over Jerusalem.<br />
b) All street of Jerusalem got full of zombies.<br />
c) All sheep in Jerusalem started baying.<br />
d) All wines in Jerusalem turned into vinegar.</p>
<ul></ul>
</li>
<li><em>Question 20 omitted because I&#8217;m too lazy (and obviously sinful) to translate all that text. Maybe later.</em></li>
</ol>
<p>How well did you do? Compare your answers to the holy truth:</p>
<ol>
<li>C (2 Kings 2:23-25)</li>
<li>B (Exodus 24:26-28)</li>
<li>C (Exodus 34:14)</li>
<li>B (Deuteronomy 21:18-21)</li>
<li>C (Deuteronomy 22:13-21)</li>
<li>D (Deuteronomy 14:7-8 and Leviticus 11:1-20)</li>
<li>A (Judges 1:19)</li>
<li>B (Judges 11:30-40)</li>
<li>D (1 Samuel 18:27)</li>
<li>B (Job 2:3)</li>
<li>A (Isaiah 3:16-17)</li>
<li>A (Leviticus 21:16-23)</li>
<li>C (Jeremiah 10:2-4)</li>
<li>B (Matthew 19:11)</li>
<li>A (Leviticus 11:6)</li>
<li>B (Genesis 30:37-39)</li>
<li>A (Psalms 7:9, 16:7, 26:2, 73:21, Proverbs 23:16)</li>
<li>All of the above (Isaiah 34:7, Numbers 23:22; 24:8, Deuteronomy 33:17, Deuteronomy 32:33, Psalms 74:13-14, Isaiah 13:21-22, 34:13-14, Proverbs 23:32)</li>
<li>B (Matthew 27:51-53)</li>
</ol>
<ht />More Antichristianity: <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/waldheri/morality" rel="bookmark" title="June 14, 2007">Morality</a>
| <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/anath/christmas2" rel="bookmark" title="December 25, 2009">Christmas without Christ &#8211; Why?</a>
| <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/antichrist/002-fodder-for-followers" rel="bookmark" title="August 15, 2011">002: Fodder for Followers</a>
<!-- Similar Posts took 194.781 ms --><p>I just saw <a href="http://breadfan.tumblr.com/post/126696009">this Greek post</a> on making a multiple choice test in the Bible that I thought was brilliant and I couldn&#8217;t help but repost the translated version.</p>
<p>The following is basically a little test to see if you still remember the Good Book and all the nice values it has provided to you. Use it in case you need to freshen up your memory, to test if you children are paying attention in School and so on.</p>
<p>Try to figure out which are the correct answers and see how close to inspired perfection you stand. One of the following questions has more than one answer. Can you tell which one?</p>
<p>Good Luck!</p>
<ol>
<li><em>A Few children were making fun of Prophet Elisha as he was going up a mountain, shouting at him &#8220;Get up baldie!&#8221;. Elisha&#8230; </em>
<p>a) Cut the ears of 42 of them and made them eat them.<br />
b) Cursed them so that a fire broke out around them, burning 42 of the kids.<br />
c) Cursed them so that two bears came out of the woods and mauled 42 of them.<br />
d) Turned 42 of them into pigs.</p>
<ul></ul>
</li>
<li><em>What is the 10th Commandment that God gave to Moses to write on two stone plates in the Mount Sina </em>
<p>a) Do not put one ox and one mule in the same field.<br />
b) Do not cook a kid (baby goat) in the milk of it&#8217;s mother.<br />
c) Do not sleep with a deaf-mute so that you don&#8217;t turn into a deaf-mute yourself.<br />
d) Do not open you house&#8217;s door to idol worshippers.</p>
<ul></ul>
</li>
<li><em>What is the name of God? </em>
<p>a) Whiner.<br />
b) Cheater.<br />
c) Jealous.<br />
d) Naughty.</p>
<ul></ul>
</li>
<li><em>How should parents kill their son in case he&#8217;s drinking and talking back to them?</em>
<p>a) Implate him.<br />
b) Stone him.<br />
c) Burn him alive.<br />
d) Decapitate him.</p>
<ul></ul>
</li>
<li><em>What happens if you&#8217;re not a (female) virgin on the first night of marriage? </em>
<p>a) Your father must pay the husband 100 pail.<br />
b) Your husband whips you and then divorces you.<br />
c) You&#8217;re stoned to death.<br />
d) The whole village spits on you.</p>
<ul></ul>
</li>
<li><em>What is explicitly allowed to be eaten according to the Holy Writ? (All others are explicitly forbidden) </em>
<p>a) Fried Oysters.<br />
b) Rabbit stew.<br />
c) Lemon Pork.<br />
d) Grasshoppers with ketchup.</p>
<ul></ul>
</li>
<li><em>According to the Holy Writ, God cannot defea</em>t
<p>a) Those who have iron chariots.<br />
b) Those who have iron spears.<br />
c) Those who have iron swords.<br />
d) Those who have iron bows.</p>
<ul></ul>
</li>
<li><em>When Jephthah came victorious from battle, what did he burn on the alter as an offerring to God? </em>
<p>a) His only son.<br />
b) His only daughter.<br />
c) His two small grandchildren.<br />
d) His wife.</p>
<ul></ul>
</li>
<li><em>What did David offer to Kind Saul so that he would get his daughter? </em>
<p>a) The heads of 200 Phillistines.<br />
b) The dicks of 200 Phillistines.<br />
c) The testicles of 200 Phillistines.<br />
d) The penis skins of 200 Phillistines.</p>
<ul></ul>
</li>
<li><em>For what reason did God torture Job?</em>
<p>a) Because God was bored and had nothing to do.<br />
b) Because Satan challenged him to destroy him for no reason.<br />
c) Because Job ate raw meat.<br />
d) Because Job forgot to use incense.</p>
<ul></ul>
</li>
<li><em>How does God punish pretentious women? </em>
<p>a) He makes them bald, and exposes their cunt.<br />
b) He makes them full of zits, and exposes their tits.<br />
c) He makes them full of sores, and exposes their thighs.<br />
d) He makes the grow a beard, and exposes their arse.</p>
<ul></ul>
</li>
<li><em>What is the punishment for the lame? </em>
<p>a) Do not approach the holy so that they do not desecrate them.<br />
b) They must pay double the tax as the healthy.<br />
c) The must burn double the amount of animals during sacrifices.<br />
d) They are not allowed to eat bread.</p>
<ul></ul>
</li>
<li><em>Which Christmas tradition is forbidden by God? </em>
<p>a) Sing Christmas carols for money.<br />
b) Giving gifts.<br />
c) Decorating a tree.<br />
d) Eat turkey.</p>
<ul></ul>
</li>
<li><em>What did Jesus suggest people do, if they can tolerate it? </em>
<p>a) Self-flaggelate<br />
b) Become a eunuch.<br />
c) Rip out their eyes.<br />
d) Stay unmarried.</p>
<ul></ul>
</li>
<li><em>Hare, according to the Holy Writ is: </em>
<p>a) Marsupial<br />
b) Reptile<br />
c) Ruminant<br />
d) Predatory</p>
<ul></ul>
</li>
<li><em>How do we make animals with dots? </em>
<p>a) We make them wear tunics with dots which can get discoloured, and leave them in the rain.<br />
b) We make them look things with dots while they&#8217;re drinking water.<br />
c) We throw them on the coals and take them immediately off them again.<br />
d) We make them stand under thinly grown Garlands every noon.</p>
<ul></ul>
</li>
<li><em>According to the Holy Writ, feeling come from&#8230; </em>
<p>a) The intestines<br />
b) The stomach<br />
c) The liver<br />
d) The kidneys</p>
<ul></ul>
</li>
<li><em>Which from the following creatures appears in the Holy Writ?</em>
<p>a) Unicorn<br />
b) Dragon<br />
c) Basilisk<br />
d) Satyr</p>
<ul></ul>
</li>
<li><em>When Jesus dies, which from the following miracles happened? </em>
<p>a) A rain of blood fell over Jerusalem.<br />
b) All street of Jerusalem got full of zombies.<br />
c) All sheep in Jerusalem started baying.<br />
d) All wines in Jerusalem turned into vinegar.</p>
<ul></ul>
</li>
<li><em>Question 20 omitted because I&#8217;m too lazy (and obviously sinful) to translate all that text. Maybe later.</em></li>
</ol>
<p>How well did you do? Compare your answers to the holy truth:</p>
<ol>
<li>C (2 Kings 2:23-25)</li>
<li>B (Exodus 24:26-28)</li>
<li>C (Exodus 34:14)</li>
<li>B (Deuteronomy 21:18-21)</li>
<li>C (Deuteronomy 22:13-21)</li>
<li>D (Deuteronomy 14:7-8 and Leviticus 11:1-20)</li>
<li>A (Judges 1:19)</li>
<li>B (Judges 11:30-40)</li>
<li>D (1 Samuel 18:27)</li>
<li>B (Job 2:3)</li>
<li>A (Isaiah 3:16-17)</li>
<li>A (Leviticus 21:16-23)</li>
<li>C (Jeremiah 10:2-4)</li>
<li>B (Matthew 19:11)</li>
<li>A (Leviticus 11:6)</li>
<li>B (Genesis 30:37-39)</li>
<li>A (Psalms 7:9, 16:7, 26:2, 73:21, Proverbs 23:16)</li>
<li>All of the above (Isaiah 34:7, Numbers 23:22; 24:8, Deuteronomy 33:17, Deuteronomy 32:33, Psalms 74:13-14, Isaiah 13:21-22, 34:13-14, Proverbs 23:32)</li>
<li>B (Matthew 27:51-53)</li>
</ol>
<ht />More Antichristianity: <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/waldheri/morality" rel="bookmark" title="June 14, 2007">Morality</a>
| <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/anath/christmas2" rel="bookmark" title="December 25, 2009">Christmas without Christ &#8211; Why?</a>
| <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/antichrist/002-fodder-for-followers" rel="bookmark" title="August 15, 2011">002: Fodder for Followers</a>
<!-- Similar Posts took 194.781 ms -->The most depressing story about Faith Healing you’ll readhttp://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/db0/the-most-depressing-story-about-faith-healing-youll-read
The Antichristian Phenomenon » Db0urn:uuid:1a856979-3e56-0ce3-8c7d-ed6d3ded48bfFri, 04 Jun 2010 07:35:29 +0000A redditor writes his own experiences of attending a Benny Hinn show. The story is, if not disgusting, mildly depressing. <p><a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/cb6fp/i_have_a_depressing_story_about_a_faith_healer/">Reddit delivers again</a>, this time from the personal experience of one redditor with the Mega-conman Benny Hinn. The whole story is very cringe-worthy, particularly the way that people are manipulated shamelessly and then blamed for the lack of success. Some choice quotes that made my eyes pop in surprise.</p>
<blockquote><p>We sat next to a latino family who, by the looks of their clothes, did not have a pot to piss in. Upon the first offertory (and there were 4 offertories that evening), the family father cut a check for $3500 and slipped it into the lock box carried by one of the three dozen visibly armed ushers. Each lock box had a sign on the front reading, <em>Suggested Donation: $1000.00.</em> The family gave additional money each time the lock box went by, but I am not sure how much.</p></blockquote>
<p>Which is a perfect example why the poor in very religious countries have so much more difficuly rising out of poverty. The fact that the scum that is Benny Hinn can accept such donations for nothing more than a stage show is sickening.</p>
<blockquote><p>Well, the old lady who fell was crying. Not because she injured herself. But because the men in blue told her (according to one of the Pepsi Center employees who allowed us to stand nearby) that she couldn&#8217;t be healed because <em>her faith in God was not 100%.</em> She was told to stand against the wall until she confessed to God that her faith was shaken and be forgiven for it, or confess the sin she was hiding that was preventing God from healing her. A sixtysomething woman, bawling her eyes out (old people crying really gets me).</p></blockquote>
<p>This is the face of fucking evil folks. This is what you indirectly support as a moderate christian who tolerates faith healing nonsense just because you can&#8217;t bring yourself to admit that your God is not omnipotent.</p>
<p>Fuck. This. Shit.</p>
<p>It wouldn&#8217;t be as bad if it was simply foolish people losing their money to a professional conman and thus taking themselves out of the social pool in a Darwinian sense (although that&#8217;s pretty bad anyway.) It&#8217;s the fact that a scum like Benny Hinn achieves so much financial power that he can easily start lobbying politicians for policies that benefit him (even scarier, imagine politicians actually attending and believing his shows&#8230;) and he can purchase and control actual capitalist businesses and run them according to his greedy-scummy nature.</p>
<ht />More Antichristianity: <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/waldheri/child-medical-neglect-on-religious-grounds" rel="bookmark" title="October 2, 2008">Child medical neglect on religious grounds</a>
| <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/db0/number-of-the-scout" rel="bookmark" title="August 13, 2008">Number of the scout</a>
| <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/db0/a-bad-case-of-racism" rel="bookmark" title="January 10, 2008">A bad case of Racism</a>
<!-- Similar Posts took 173.322 ms --><p><a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/cb6fp/i_have_a_depressing_story_about_a_faith_healer/">Reddit delivers again</a>, this time from the personal experience of one redditor with the Mega-conman Benny Hinn. The whole story is very cringe-worthy, particularly the way that people are manipulated shamelessly and then blamed for the lack of success. Some choice quotes that made my eyes pop in surprise.</p>
<blockquote><p>We sat next to a latino family who, by the looks of their clothes, did not have a pot to piss in. Upon the first offertory (and there were 4 offertories that evening), the family father cut a check for $3500 and slipped it into the lock box carried by one of the three dozen visibly armed ushers. Each lock box had a sign on the front reading, <em>Suggested Donation: $1000.00.</em> The family gave additional money each time the lock box went by, but I am not sure how much.</p></blockquote>
<p>Which is a perfect example why the poor in very religious countries have so much more difficuly rising out of poverty. The fact that the scum that is Benny Hinn can accept such donations for nothing more than a stage show is sickening.</p>
<blockquote><p>Well, the old lady who fell was crying. Not because she injured herself. But because the men in blue told her (according to one of the Pepsi Center employees who allowed us to stand nearby) that she couldn&#8217;t be healed because <em>her faith in God was not 100%.</em> She was told to stand against the wall until she confessed to God that her faith was shaken and be forgiven for it, or confess the sin she was hiding that was preventing God from healing her. A sixtysomething woman, bawling her eyes out (old people crying really gets me).</p></blockquote>
<p>This is the face of fucking evil folks. This is what you indirectly support as a moderate christian who tolerates faith healing nonsense just because you can&#8217;t bring yourself to admit that your God is not omnipotent.</p>
<p>Fuck. This. Shit.</p>
<p>It wouldn&#8217;t be as bad if it was simply foolish people losing their money to a professional conman and thus taking themselves out of the social pool in a Darwinian sense (although that&#8217;s pretty bad anyway.) It&#8217;s the fact that a scum like Benny Hinn achieves so much financial power that he can easily start lobbying politicians for policies that benefit him (even scarier, imagine politicians actually attending and believing his shows&#8230;) and he can purchase and control actual capitalist businesses and run them according to his greedy-scummy nature.</p>
<ht />More Antichristianity: <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/waldheri/child-medical-neglect-on-religious-grounds" rel="bookmark" title="October 2, 2008">Child medical neglect on religious grounds</a>
| <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/db0/number-of-the-scout" rel="bookmark" title="August 13, 2008">Number of the scout</a>
| <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/db0/a-bad-case-of-racism" rel="bookmark" title="January 10, 2008">A bad case of Racism</a>
<!-- Similar Posts took 173.322 ms -->Last.fm purges large number of anti-religion groupshttp://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/db0/last-fm-purges-large-number-of-anti-religion-groups
The Antichristian Phenomenon » Db0urn:uuid:0feecf74-2966-1ee6-b21f-01c5f34c5f01Mon, 26 Apr 2010 06:36:26 +0000Last.fm has decided that all the "hatred" has to go. The ACP managed to weather the storm and reports on the aftermath. <p>Ever since Last.fm sold out to corporate interests I was expecting the day would come when the many anti-religion groups that existed there were taken down to avoid offending the sensibilities of the increasing pop audience. Well it seems that happened while I was not looking as the first thing I heard about it <a href="http://www.last.fm/group/The+Antichristian+Phenomenon/forum/14440/_/616489">is this post</a> from Anath in the forum. Apparently the last.fm admins purged many of the existing anti-religion groups with the reasoning that they were promoting &#8220;hatred&#8221; but fortunately spared the ACP which was seen of keeping things more civil. This message was sent to Anath:</p>
<blockquote><p>Hi,</p>
<p>As you might have heard, some anti-religion groups have been deleted recently. I have been looking at your group as well, and a few things are beyond what I would normally authorise, but most of the contents are discussion orientated and not just plain bashing and hatred. This is the reason why I am not deleting this group. But I strongly encourage you to keep a strong moderation going, so it does not become mindless hatred.</p>
<p>As an example, &#8220;Metal against Islamism group was deleted&#8230; BASTARDS!&#8221; and &#8220;Oh good grief. Stupid bastards, creating a mass of groups for exactly the same thing. That&#8217;s just confusing.&#8221; are the kind of things I would rather not want to see appearing.</p></blockquote>
<p>In this thread various opinions were heard, some coming from the Metal against Islamism admins who tried to explain that they had no warning and no chance to fix things before being deleted. The admins of Last.fm <a href="http://www.last.fm/group/The+Antichristian+Phenomenon/forum/14440/_/616489/_/12277824">also chimed in</a> to explain that they would simply prefer to avoid rampart hatred but have no problem with reasoned arguments. Apparently one of the main reasons why MAI was deleted was their shoutbox was flooded with seething anti-Islam posts, far too many to delete individually. So the whole thing had to be taken down. It reminds of how the Protoss used to clean the Zerg infestations in the popular Starcraft<sup>[<a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/db0/last-fm-purges-large-number-of-anti-religion-groups#footnote_0_656" id="identifier_0_656" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="I was thinking of linkin to a wikipedia article of this but then I thought: Seriously, if you don&rsquo;t know what Starcraft is, you&rsquo;re probably too old for this site anyway ">I</a>]</sup> PC game.</p>
<p>The ironic thing is that the reason the ACP group was spared was the strong moderation we were seen of having which prevented a lot of the most questionable stuff. This moderation, which takes the form of requiring people to join the group before posting in the forum or shoutbox, was implemented in fact to prevent Christian trolling as we would often get fly-by posts and shouts from people who only wanted to disrupt. They would spam the forum with dozens of pro-christian nonsense for example and then leave before being banned, making it impossible to stop them.</p>
<p>The interesting thing is that all this purging has given a very strong boost in activity to the ACP as it has now become a haven for all those people left groupless in the anti-religion department. Hopefully this will make for a healthier and more active anti-christian community that does not devolve into a circle-jerk of mindless christian bashing.</p>
<p>It also points out the benefits of having an external website complementing your last.fm forum such as the one you&#8217;re currently reading. In case the ACP had been taken down, we would still be able to use this area for a staging area until we found a new home, either under a new name or a new forum.</p>
<p>As for Last.fm, unfrtunately it seems to be taking more and more of the corporate route. One can only hope that they won&#8217;t go to the extent that Microsoft has for example when they started banning all mention of homosexuality in their allowed usernames. One can only hope that if &#8220;hateful&#8221; anti-religion groups have been deleted, the same has been done to the hateful religious, fascist and racist groups but I have no knowledge of this either way.</p>
<h5>Footnotes</h5><ol class="footnotes"><li id="footnote_0_656" class="footnote">I was thinking of linkin to a wikipedia article of this but then I thought: Seriously, if you don&#8217;t know what Starcraft is, you&#8217;re probably too old for this site anyway <img src='http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_razz.gif' alt=':P' class='wp-smiley' /> </li></ol><ht />More Antichristianity: <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/db0/cleaning-up" rel="bookmark" title="January 18, 2011">Cleaning Up</a>
| <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/admin/welcome-to-the-beta" rel="bookmark" title="May 19, 2007">Welcome to the beta</a>
| <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/db0/sensitivities" rel="bookmark" title="February 24, 2008">Sensitivities</a>
<!-- Similar Posts took 103.795 ms --><p>Ever since Last.fm sold out to corporate interests I was expecting the day would come when the many anti-religion groups that existed there were taken down to avoid offending the sensibilities of the increasing pop audience. Well it seems that happened while I was not looking as the first thing I heard about it <a href="http://www.last.fm/group/The+Antichristian+Phenomenon/forum/14440/_/616489">is this post</a> from Anath in the forum. Apparently the last.fm admins purged many of the existing anti-religion groups with the reasoning that they were promoting &#8220;hatred&#8221; but fortunately spared the ACP which was seen of keeping things more civil. This message was sent to Anath:</p>
<blockquote><p>Hi,</p>
<p>As you might have heard, some anti-religion groups have been deleted recently. I have been looking at your group as well, and a few things are beyond what I would normally authorise, but most of the contents are discussion orientated and not just plain bashing and hatred. This is the reason why I am not deleting this group. But I strongly encourage you to keep a strong moderation going, so it does not become mindless hatred.</p>
<p>As an example, &#8220;Metal against Islamism group was deleted&#8230; BASTARDS!&#8221; and &#8220;Oh good grief. Stupid bastards, creating a mass of groups for exactly the same thing. That&#8217;s just confusing.&#8221; are the kind of things I would rather not want to see appearing.</p></blockquote>
<p>In this thread various opinions were heard, some coming from the Metal against Islamism admins who tried to explain that they had no warning and no chance to fix things before being deleted. The admins of Last.fm <a href="http://www.last.fm/group/The+Antichristian+Phenomenon/forum/14440/_/616489/_/12277824">also chimed in</a> to explain that they would simply prefer to avoid rampart hatred but have no problem with reasoned arguments. Apparently one of the main reasons why MAI was deleted was their shoutbox was flooded with seething anti-Islam posts, far too many to delete individually. So the whole thing had to be taken down. It reminds of how the Protoss used to clean the Zerg infestations in the popular Starcraft<sup>[<a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/db0/last-fm-purges-large-number-of-anti-religion-groups#footnote_0_656" id="identifier_0_656" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="I was thinking of linkin to a wikipedia article of this but then I thought: Seriously, if you don&rsquo;t know what Starcraft is, you&rsquo;re probably too old for this site anyway ">I</a>]</sup> PC game.</p>
<p>The ironic thing is that the reason the ACP group was spared was the strong moderation we were seen of having which prevented a lot of the most questionable stuff. This moderation, which takes the form of requiring people to join the group before posting in the forum or shoutbox, was implemented in fact to prevent Christian trolling as we would often get fly-by posts and shouts from people who only wanted to disrupt. They would spam the forum with dozens of pro-christian nonsense for example and then leave before being banned, making it impossible to stop them.</p>
<p>The interesting thing is that all this purging has given a very strong boost in activity to the ACP as it has now become a haven for all those people left groupless in the anti-religion department. Hopefully this will make for a healthier and more active anti-christian community that does not devolve into a circle-jerk of mindless christian bashing.</p>
<p>It also points out the benefits of having an external website complementing your last.fm forum such as the one you&#8217;re currently reading. In case the ACP had been taken down, we would still be able to use this area for a staging area until we found a new home, either under a new name or a new forum.</p>
<p>As for Last.fm, unfrtunately it seems to be taking more and more of the corporate route. One can only hope that they won&#8217;t go to the extent that Microsoft has for example when they started banning all mention of homosexuality in their allowed usernames. One can only hope that if &#8220;hateful&#8221; anti-religion groups have been deleted, the same has been done to the hateful religious, fascist and racist groups but I have no knowledge of this either way.</p>
<h5>Footnotes</h5><ol class="footnotes"><li id="footnote_0_656" class="footnote">I was thinking of linkin to a wikipedia article of this but then I thought: Seriously, if you don&#8217;t know what Starcraft is, you&#8217;re probably too old for this site anyway <img src='http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_razz.gif' alt=':P' class='wp-smiley' /> </li></ol><ht />More Antichristianity: <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/db0/cleaning-up" rel="bookmark" title="January 18, 2011">Cleaning Up</a>
| <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/admin/welcome-to-the-beta" rel="bookmark" title="May 19, 2007">Welcome to the beta</a>
| <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/db0/sensitivities" rel="bookmark" title="February 24, 2008">Sensitivities</a>
<!-- Similar Posts took 103.795 ms -->I like herhttp://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/db0/i-like-her
The Antichristian Phenomenon » Db0urn:uuid:5abfc022-5b7e-8e94-751d-216434500a34Wed, 23 Dec 2009 12:48:00 +0000That&#8217;s all folks. More Antichristianity: Satan pooping on Jesus? Hell yeah! &#124; Fool&#8217;s Journal Roundup &#124; Ashamed Christians <p><span class='embed-youtube' style='text-align:center; display: block;'><iframe class='youtube-player' type='text/html' width='640' height='390' src='http://www.youtube.com/embed/0oR5GwAEYCE?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;fs=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;wmode=transparent' frameborder='0'></iframe></span></p>
<p>That&#8217;s all folks.</p>
<ht />More Antichristianity: <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/leat/satan-pooping-on-jesus-hell-yeah" rel="bookmark" title="September 30, 2009">Satan pooping on Jesus? Hell yeah!</a>
| <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/db0/fools-journal-roundup" rel="bookmark" title="March 31, 2008">Fool&#8217;s Journal Roundup</a>
| <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/leat/ashamed-christians" rel="bookmark" title="April 19, 2009">Ashamed Christians</a>
<!-- Similar Posts took 8.353 ms --><p><span class='embed-youtube' style='text-align:center; display: block;'><iframe class='youtube-player' type='text/html' width='640' height='390' src='http://www.youtube.com/embed/0oR5GwAEYCE?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;fs=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;wmode=transparent' frameborder='0'></iframe></span></p>
<p>That&#8217;s all folks.</p>
<ht />More Antichristianity: <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/leat/satan-pooping-on-jesus-hell-yeah" rel="bookmark" title="September 30, 2009">Satan pooping on Jesus? Hell yeah!</a>
| <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/db0/fools-journal-roundup" rel="bookmark" title="March 31, 2008">Fool&#8217;s Journal Roundup</a>
| <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/leat/ashamed-christians" rel="bookmark" title="April 19, 2009">Ashamed Christians</a>
<!-- Similar Posts took 8.353 ms -->Atheist-bashing now in mainstream video gameshttp://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/db0/atheist-bashing-now-in-mainstream-video-games
The Antichristian Phenomenon » Db0urn:uuid:370e62ec-7445-4a70-fcc8-d726ca341777Mon, 16 Nov 2009 13:31:27 +0000Dragon Age is a mainsteam video game which features a range of character. Unfortunately it seems that the Atheists have a specific role to play... <p>We&#8217;re used to <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HollywoodAtheist">Hollywood portraying Atheists as cynical and bitter</a> personalities who only need the slightest push to see the light as part of their redemption (or alternatively serve as a handy character to kill for being too rational.) Usually we can <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/anath/when-religion-ruins-a-potentially-decent-movie">point out and avoid movies</a> which play on those ridiculous archetypes but sometimes this nonsense comes at you from where you least expect it.</p>
<p>Such was my experience with Dragon Age, which after my <a href="http://dbzer0.com/blog/how-i-spent-my-afternoon-yesterday">recent escapades during its procurement</a>, now gives me another reason to blog in relation to it. You see, this game not only features de-facto atheists as part of your band of &#8220;heroes&#8221;, not only does it feature them in a profoundly Holywood way but it goes at that extra step to make sure we get the point.</p>
<p>As far as I&#8217;ve progressed in the game, I&#8217;ve encountered two characters who can be rightly proclaimed as atheists. One of them is the Wild Witch Morrigan which even though is a mage shows a strong disbelief to &#8220;The Maker&#8221; (A monotheistic deity whose religion is similar to the Christian one) and the other is Shale, a stone Golem which I&#8217;ve only had with me for a bit and speaks like an agnostic but already shows strong tendencies towards atheism.</p>
<p>You get the religious views of those two characters mainly by having them in your party at the same time as you have the ultra religious Leliana which then strikes up casual dialogue with either of them on this topic while you&#8217;re walking in cities. From those ambient discussions, you quickly realize the beliefs of the two atheists while also getting the classic Holywood trope about atheism. Even though the discussions are quite humorous at times and entertaining in their own right, especially at the parts where Morrigan wonders why she should believe in anything without proof, they quickly turn annoying when instead of showing a person who has a solid basis in their worldview, they paint those characters as insecure and afraid (deep down).</p>
<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m feel sorry for how isolated and alone you must feel in your life&#8221; Leliene says at the end of an exasperating discussion with Morrigan. &#8220;Er&#8230;I&#8230;none of your business.&#8221; retorts Morrigan, making obvious to all that she does indeed feel isolated and lonely. I couldn&#8217;t help but feel why she couldn&#8217;t answer like I would. &#8220;You&#8217;re mistaken, I&#8217;m far from lonely&#8221; or even &#8220;I like it that way.&#8221; In short, any kind of retort that an atheist who is not insecure in his life would give.</p>
<p>But that&#8217;s not the worst of it, far from it in fact, if that was all I wouldn&#8217;t really mind it. What really annoys me is not simply that those two are cynical, bitter or whatever but that they&#8217;re both downright evil! And this is quite the explicit kind of evil mind you, not the vague moral choices that seen from the right perspective might lead to some interesting ethical questions, but the &#8220;who cares for suffering, just give me unlimited power no matter the costs&#8221; kind of evil that only exist in the cartoonish villains of Hollywood. Morrigan is by far the worse of course, abundantly disproving when I even think of helping the downtrodden and blatantly approving of only the most vile acts (examples: -5 approval for simply convincing a merchant <em>not</em> to exploit the desperate refugees. +7 approval for opting to allow the evil demon to possess a child.)</p>
<p>Shale on the other hand openly admits in disliking humans, consider itself a far superior being, has no issue with wanton violence and is of course, quite hearless about it. This wouldn&#8217;t be an issue in itself but when coupled with it openly promoting rationalism and critical thinking, once more one tends to say &#8220;Now hold on a goddamn minute!&#8221;</p>
<p>Now let me here point out that I have no problem with there being evil Atheists in games. Not at all. However I&#8217;d like some basis on this evil which here simply doesn&#8217;t exist. Morrigan seems to be wishing the evil options for the sake of being evil. The excuses for the disapproval the character gives are laughable only only serve to point out the shallowness of her worldview which makes the fact that she ignores the obvious result of doing the good thing as benefiting our own mission even more annoying. For example, during a mission where I had to convince a king to help me, I reached his castle only to find that undead were pouring out of it and attacking a nearby village. It made perfect sense to protect the village during the attack and then once the undead were destroyed or lessened, I would go in the castle. Then the obviously thankful King would be more willing to help me out. However for Morrigan helping the village was a big no-no so I got penalized for doing the sensible thing.</p>
<p>So evil atheists are not a problem but when you have <em>only </em>the (blatant) Atheists as goddamn evil bastards while the theists are all little goody-two-shoes angels who approve of all the good stuff (and of course the game doesn&#8217;t give any proper moral choices, only caricaturish black&amp;white options) and only care for helping the poor, then one can&#8217;t help but make the appropriate assumptions.</p>
<p>While the game could have put a nice perspective into the oppression of organized religion in the form of the templars, we&#8217;re rather told that they&#8217;re in fact right for being so oppressive since all those people they oppress are kind obviously powerhungry fucks. So again religion + authority + strict rules = good while individualism + atheism + freethought = bad.</p>
<p>For me thus, the problem does not simply simply lie in the fact that some Atheists are portrayed as powerhungry bastards, it lies in the fact that <em>all </em>atheists are such while <em>all </em>the theists are, quite explicitly, good. Would it hurt to have some of the theist heroes be intolerant of, say elves and dwarves (maybe some are, I haven&#8217;t seen all of them yet). Would it hurt to have some of them disproving of alternate sexualities? And on the same track, it wouldn&#8217;t hurt if some of the atheists weren&#8217;t total bastards all the time. It really pokes me in the wrong way where either I have to make total dickish choices with my character (eat babies!) or to lose the only two characters I like since they will disapprove of me so much.</p>
<p>Unfortunately this is a perfect example of the Hollywood-type worldview, on games which enter the same mainstream as movies. When the budgets and risks get into the same range, only the same safe bets in displayed morals and ideas can be played and thus culture might just as well go down the same shallow drain. I&#8217;m afraid that as long as profits are on the line, morality will always remain black and white and cuddle the theists who wish to claim the moral high ground. After all, in aggregate, they have the most money don&#8217;t they?</p>
<ht />More Antichristianity: <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/db0/crimes-of-atheism" rel="bookmark" title="May 20, 2007">Crimes of Atheism</a>
| <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/waldheri/responding-to-the-state-has-the-new-atheism-failed" rel="bookmark" title="July 23, 2009">Responding to The State: Has the &#8216;new atheism&#8217; failed?</a>
| <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/tintagon/no-son-theres-no-bogeyman-in-the-closet-just-an-atheist" rel="bookmark" title="November 26, 2011">No, son, there&#8217;s no bogeyman in the closet, just an atheist</a>
<!-- Similar Posts took 142.669 ms --><p>We&#8217;re used to <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HollywoodAtheist">Hollywood portraying Atheists as cynical and bitter</a> personalities who only need the slightest push to see the light as part of their redemption (or alternatively serve as a handy character to kill for being too rational.) Usually we can <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/anath/when-religion-ruins-a-potentially-decent-movie">point out and avoid movies</a> which play on those ridiculous archetypes but sometimes this nonsense comes at you from where you least expect it.</p>
<p>Such was my experience with Dragon Age, which after my <a href="http://dbzer0.com/blog/how-i-spent-my-afternoon-yesterday">recent escapades during its procurement</a>, now gives me another reason to blog in relation to it. You see, this game not only features de-facto atheists as part of your band of &#8220;heroes&#8221;, not only does it feature them in a profoundly Holywood way but it goes at that extra step to make sure we get the point.</p>
<p>As far as I&#8217;ve progressed in the game, I&#8217;ve encountered two characters who can be rightly proclaimed as atheists. One of them is the Wild Witch Morrigan which even though is a mage shows a strong disbelief to &#8220;The Maker&#8221; (A monotheistic deity whose religion is similar to the Christian one) and the other is Shale, a stone Golem which I&#8217;ve only had with me for a bit and speaks like an agnostic but already shows strong tendencies towards atheism.</p>
<p>You get the religious views of those two characters mainly by having them in your party at the same time as you have the ultra religious Leliana which then strikes up casual dialogue with either of them on this topic while you&#8217;re walking in cities. From those ambient discussions, you quickly realize the beliefs of the two atheists while also getting the classic Holywood trope about atheism. Even though the discussions are quite humorous at times and entertaining in their own right, especially at the parts where Morrigan wonders why she should believe in anything without proof, they quickly turn annoying when instead of showing a person who has a solid basis in their worldview, they paint those characters as insecure and afraid (deep down).</p>
<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m feel sorry for how isolated and alone you must feel in your life&#8221; Leliene says at the end of an exasperating discussion with Morrigan. &#8220;Er&#8230;I&#8230;none of your business.&#8221; retorts Morrigan, making obvious to all that she does indeed feel isolated and lonely. I couldn&#8217;t help but feel why she couldn&#8217;t answer like I would. &#8220;You&#8217;re mistaken, I&#8217;m far from lonely&#8221; or even &#8220;I like it that way.&#8221; In short, any kind of retort that an atheist who is not insecure in his life would give.</p>
<p>But that&#8217;s not the worst of it, far from it in fact, if that was all I wouldn&#8217;t really mind it. What really annoys me is not simply that those two are cynical, bitter or whatever but that they&#8217;re both downright evil! And this is quite the explicit kind of evil mind you, not the vague moral choices that seen from the right perspective might lead to some interesting ethical questions, but the &#8220;who cares for suffering, just give me unlimited power no matter the costs&#8221; kind of evil that only exist in the cartoonish villains of Hollywood. Morrigan is by far the worse of course, abundantly disproving when I even think of helping the downtrodden and blatantly approving of only the most vile acts (examples: -5 approval for simply convincing a merchant <em>not</em> to exploit the desperate refugees. +7 approval for opting to allow the evil demon to possess a child.)</p>
<p>Shale on the other hand openly admits in disliking humans, consider itself a far superior being, has no issue with wanton violence and is of course, quite hearless about it. This wouldn&#8217;t be an issue in itself but when coupled with it openly promoting rationalism and critical thinking, once more one tends to say &#8220;Now hold on a goddamn minute!&#8221;</p>
<p>Now let me here point out that I have no problem with there being evil Atheists in games. Not at all. However I&#8217;d like some basis on this evil which here simply doesn&#8217;t exist. Morrigan seems to be wishing the evil options for the sake of being evil. The excuses for the disapproval the character gives are laughable only only serve to point out the shallowness of her worldview which makes the fact that she ignores the obvious result of doing the good thing as benefiting our own mission even more annoying. For example, during a mission where I had to convince a king to help me, I reached his castle only to find that undead were pouring out of it and attacking a nearby village. It made perfect sense to protect the village during the attack and then once the undead were destroyed or lessened, I would go in the castle. Then the obviously thankful King would be more willing to help me out. However for Morrigan helping the village was a big no-no so I got penalized for doing the sensible thing.</p>
<p>So evil atheists are not a problem but when you have <em>only </em>the (blatant) Atheists as goddamn evil bastards while the theists are all little goody-two-shoes angels who approve of all the good stuff (and of course the game doesn&#8217;t give any proper moral choices, only caricaturish black&amp;white options) and only care for helping the poor, then one can&#8217;t help but make the appropriate assumptions.</p>
<p>While the game could have put a nice perspective into the oppression of organized religion in the form of the templars, we&#8217;re rather told that they&#8217;re in fact right for being so oppressive since all those people they oppress are kind obviously powerhungry fucks. So again religion + authority + strict rules = good while individualism + atheism + freethought = bad.</p>
<p>For me thus, the problem does not simply simply lie in the fact that some Atheists are portrayed as powerhungry bastards, it lies in the fact that <em>all </em>atheists are such while <em>all </em>the theists are, quite explicitly, good. Would it hurt to have some of the theist heroes be intolerant of, say elves and dwarves (maybe some are, I haven&#8217;t seen all of them yet). Would it hurt to have some of them disproving of alternate sexualities? And on the same track, it wouldn&#8217;t hurt if some of the atheists weren&#8217;t total bastards all the time. It really pokes me in the wrong way where either I have to make total dickish choices with my character (eat babies!) or to lose the only two characters I like since they will disapprove of me so much.</p>
<p>Unfortunately this is a perfect example of the Hollywood-type worldview, on games which enter the same mainstream as movies. When the budgets and risks get into the same range, only the same safe bets in displayed morals and ideas can be played and thus culture might just as well go down the same shallow drain. I&#8217;m afraid that as long as profits are on the line, morality will always remain black and white and cuddle the theists who wish to claim the moral high ground. After all, in aggregate, they have the most money don&#8217;t they?</p>
<ht />More Antichristianity: <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/db0/crimes-of-atheism" rel="bookmark" title="May 20, 2007">Crimes of Atheism</a>
| <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/waldheri/responding-to-the-state-has-the-new-atheism-failed" rel="bookmark" title="July 23, 2009">Responding to The State: Has the &#8216;new atheism&#8217; failed?</a>
| <a href="http://www.antichristian-phenomenon.com/tintagon/no-son-theres-no-bogeyman-in-the-closet-just-an-atheist" rel="bookmark" title="November 26, 2011">No, son, there&#8217;s no bogeyman in the closet, just an atheist</a>
<!-- Similar Posts took 142.669 ms -->Find the best blogposts in the Nexushttp://atheistnexus.org/xn/detail/2182797:BlogPost:86759
Db0&amp;#039;s Posts - Atheist Nexusurn:uuid:769c04ae-1de6-9598-67ac-f393b4764414Wed, 20 Aug 2008 10:30:00 +0000
I've added the <a href="http://www.aiderss.com/all/www.atheistnexus.org">Atheist Nexus full blog RSS to AideRSS</a>. This will allow you to see the best posts that are blogged within the A|N blog system. You can also see at one go the most popular ones.<br />
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(Sorry, the blog eats the script so I can't put them here. Visit the link above)<br />
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I've already done this a few weeks ago but didn't mention it because the system was failing. It has since been solved (…
I've added the <a href="http://www.aiderss.com/all/www.atheistnexus.org">Atheist Nexus full blog RSS to AideRSS</a>. This will allow you to see the best posts that are blogged within the A|N blog system. You can also see at one go the most popular ones.<br />
<br />
<br />
(Sorry, the blog eats the script so I can't put them here. Visit the link above)<br />
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I've already done this a few weeks ago but didn't mention it because the system was failing. It has since been solved (<a href="http://getsatisfaction.com/aiderss/topics/surplus_comments#reply_572392">somewhat</a>) so now I'm letting the rest of you know.<br />
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You can easily subscribe to either the full feed, or one of less trafficed ones<br />
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How does this work, <a href="http://dbzer0.com/blog/aiding-the-atheist-blogroll">I've blogged about this shortly here</a> but basically AideRSS counts the number of times each post was voted up, commented, seen and discussed and gives it a rating. This is a nice representation of how popular that post is and thus we can filter out the rest in order to save some time.<br />
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Cheers!Lovehttp://www.last.fm/user/db0/journal/2008/07/20/22u4of_love
Db0's Music Journalurn:uuid:3e90d22e-54dd-a216-0774-3e3a1246d27cSun, 20 Jul 2008 16:51:21 +0000<div class="bbcode">Finally I can &quot;love&quot; tracks from my profile page. If there was one thing that really irked me with the previous setup it was that I just could not mark songs as loved unless I was listening to them on the last.fm radio or I wen to my Facebook profile and marked them from there.<br /><br />It seriously prevented me from marking songs as loved a lot.<br /><br />In an unrelated note, I would really like an RSS feed of last.fm's recent activity so that I can use it in <a href="http://dbzer0.com/the-penguin-migration/complexlife/" rel="nofollow">my lifestream</a> but apparently that's not possible (even though friendfeed can apparently do it somehow. API?)<br /><br />On an even more unrelated note. While the old forum search sucked, It now seems that there is not search function at all.</div><div class="feedflare">
<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Db0LastfmJournal?a=4ALNjmZmkl0:8rD3vQPwyJ8:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Db0LastfmJournal?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Db0LastfmJournal?a=4ALNjmZmkl0:8rD3vQPwyJ8:dnMXMwOfBR0"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Db0LastfmJournal?d=dnMXMwOfBR0" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Db0LastfmJournal?a=4ALNjmZmkl0:8rD3vQPwyJ8:YwkR-u9nhCs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Db0LastfmJournal?d=YwkR-u9nhCs" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Db0LastfmJournal?a=4ALNjmZmkl0:8rD3vQPwyJ8:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Db0LastfmJournal?i=4ALNjmZmkl0:8rD3vQPwyJ8:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a>
</div>Pharyngulean Minionshttp://atheistnexus.org/xn/detail/2182797:BlogPost:30863
Db0&amp;#039;s Posts - Atheist Nexusurn:uuid:c87af386-305f-7957-b2c8-8cffb79a9cd6Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:30:00 +0000
They're here and they're flooding the Nexus! :P<br />
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Jeebus! 300 members in like what? 4 hours?<br />
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I mean, look at this, they've got <a href="http://www.atheistnexus.org/group/pharyngula">the newest group</a> and it's already heavily populated.
They're here and they're flooding the Nexus! :P<br />
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Jeebus! 300 members in like what? 4 hours?<br />
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I mean, look at this, they've got <a href="http://www.atheistnexus.org/group/pharyngula">the newest group</a> and it's already heavily populated.Help perform a religious couphttp://atheistnexus.org/xn/detail/2182797:BlogPost:28293
Db0&amp;#039;s Posts - Atheist Nexusurn:uuid:fbb839a5-8db2-c378-02b4-013c19dbbb89Thu, 17 Jul 2008 08:15:14 +0000
Please <a href="http://digg.com/odd_stuff/Irreligion_Blogger_Awards_Coup">help digg up the story</a> and if you have a few moments to spare, vote up the atheist blogs in the "Best Religion Blog" Category.
Please <a href="http://digg.com/odd_stuff/Irreligion_Blogger_Awards_Coup">help digg up the story</a> and if you have a few moments to spare, vote up the atheist blogs in the "Best Religion Blog" Category.Get some Satisfactionhttp://atheistnexus.org/xn/detail/2182797:BlogPost:27449
Db0&amp;#039;s Posts - Atheist Nexusurn:uuid:f61a8a3c-22e4-d0fc-b2cd-2e89b0e4f267Wed, 16 Jul 2008 23:35:46 +0000
So after discussions with Brother Richard and general mucking around, we've finally setup <a href="http://getsatisfaction.com/atheistnexus">the official support channel for the Atheist Nexus</a>. This is going to be dealt over at Get Satisfaction(GSFN) and we're already working on making it more integrated into the site.<br />
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You might have noticed the new "Member-Powered Support" widget on the left. I won't <a href="http://www.atheistnexus.org/forum/topic/show?id=2182797%3ATopic%3A22731">explain…</a>
So after discussions with Brother Richard and general mucking around, we've finally setup <a href="http://getsatisfaction.com/atheistnexus">the official support channel for the Atheist Nexus</a>. This is going to be dealt over at Get Satisfaction(GSFN) and we're already working on making it more integrated into the site.<br />
<br />
You might have noticed the new "Member-Powered Support" widget on the left. I won't <a href="http://www.atheistnexus.org/forum/topic/show?id=2182797%3ATopic%3A22731">explain again the benefits</a> but needless to say it will make support and suggestions so much easier.<br />
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So if you have something to propose, a question to ask, a problem to solve or just want to open a general discussion and you hate the forums here, head over there and post. I guarantee fast responses :)Visualized Last.fmhttp://www.last.fm/user/db0/journal/2008/03/07/wwf_visualized_last.fm
Db0's Music Journalurn:uuid:97e1e329-ab44-e10a-3d28-b3e6cad27f5fFri, 07 Mar 2008 08:15:51 +0000<div class="bbcode">Yay, thanks to <span class="userIcon"><a href="http://www.last.fm/user/C26000" class="bbcode_user">C26000</a></span> I now have my own <a href="http://www.last.fm/user/C26000/journal/2006/07/30/195693/">personal stats visualization thingy</a> ;)<br /><br /><a href="http://www.dbzer0.com/gallery2/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&amp;g2_itemId=2239&amp;g2_GALLERYSID=6686c13da91b704c118cb83232044d81" rel="nofollow"><img src="http://dbzer0.com/gallery2/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&amp;g2_itemId=2241&amp;g2_serialNumber=2&amp;g2_GALLERYSID=6686c13da91b704c118cb83232044d81" /></a><br /><br />I am guessing that the colours are calculated based on the tags the song has, so the more different the tags, the more different the colours.<br /><br />In my case, it seems to be separated into three distinct periods.<br /><br />1. When I started using last.fm (audioscrobbler back then) you can see that I was listening to mainly the same kind of music and thus the whole things is basically one colour. That didn't really change much until I moved to the UK and phase 2 began<br /><br />2. In phase 2, I pretty much stopped scrobbling most of my music due to lack of computer time and later due to lack of cumputer. I did listen to a lot of Mago de Oz for a period though ;) <br />Eventually I stopped tottaly for 2 months which created that &quot;pinched&quot; effect you see in the middle. Then phase 3 strarted after I moved to Deutschland<br /><br />3. Here my taste started to vary a bit. You can see where a friend introduced me to Ska-P and later on I found Freak Kitchen and all the German Medieval bands which started squeezing all the metal away. However the red core remains ;)</div><div class="feedflare">
<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Db0LastfmJournal?a=8he8yse1tzY:-5JOARncbBE:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Db0LastfmJournal?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Db0LastfmJournal?a=8he8yse1tzY:-5JOARncbBE:dnMXMwOfBR0"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Db0LastfmJournal?d=dnMXMwOfBR0" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Db0LastfmJournal?a=8he8yse1tzY:-5JOARncbBE:YwkR-u9nhCs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Db0LastfmJournal?d=YwkR-u9nhCs" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Db0LastfmJournal?a=8he8yse1tzY:-5JOARncbBE:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Db0LastfmJournal?i=8he8yse1tzY:-5JOARncbBE:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a>
</div>Audiosurfhttp://www.last.fm/user/db0/journal/2008/02/01/wwe_audiosurf
Db0's Music Journalurn:uuid:6a04e3b9-cc93-aabe-1c61-c1d3a2408954Fri, 01 Feb 2008 18:05:01 +0000<div class="bbcode">So I've recently discovered <a href="http://www.audio-surf.com/" rel="nofollow">this little game</a> that seems very interesting. I've downloaded the public beta and played with it a while and I must say that releasing it to the public like that must have been the best thing they did for promotion.<br /><br />The game plays very interestingly and has various levels of difficulty to keep you occupied. I personally didn't try the very difficult levels but stayed in the medium and even then didn't manage to catch the max. Still with just one hour of play I didn't expect much<br /><br />It uses some algorithm to calculate your level setup before you start by analyzing the song and thus give you an appropriate ride. Unfortunately, as with most of these kinds of algorithms, it's not really tuned to work well with metal songs as it expects electronic music. Hmmmm, now that I think about it, perhaps I should have been playing some <a href="http://www.last.fm/music/Machinae+Supremacy" class="bbcode_artist">Machinae Supremacy</a> instead of <a href="http://www.last.fm/music/Saltatio+Mortis" class="bbcode_artist">Saltatio Mortis</a> :-/<br /><br />An annoying thing is that it does not currently read tags but rather just looks at the filename. Since my filenames include artist, album, track nr and name,this made it impossible to select some songs from some albums as the select window is non expandable and the font is huge. So before <a href="http://www.fileshack.com/file.x/11638/Audiosurf" rel="nofollow">you use it</a>, I suggest you create an extra folder and copy your songs to it so that you can just play one after the other.<br /><br />It's a pity it doesn't run under linux however as I would totally buy it. Currently I am not certain if I will as it's quite a hindrance to dual boot just to play it and I'd rather work on <a href="http://www.wesnoth.org" rel="nofollow">Wesnoth</a><br /><br />I've also scraped my old playlist in order to make <a href="http://www.last.fm/user/db0/playlist/">a new one</a> that will probably, hopefully be good with it. Let's see. If you however have some songs (you think I would like) to propose, be my guests.<br /><br />UPDATE: You should use a tag to mark good songs to ride. I personally use <a href="http://www.last.fm/tag/audiosurf" class="bbcode_tag" rel="tag">audiosurf</a><br /><br /><object width="425" height="350"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/JFwWtr8DMBU"></param> <param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param> <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/JFwWtr8DMBU" wmode="transparent" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="350"></embed> </object></div><div class="feedflare">
<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Db0LastfmJournal?a=_kpU5C638KY:H_dgs757B8w:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Db0LastfmJournal?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Db0LastfmJournal?a=_kpU5C638KY:H_dgs757B8w:dnMXMwOfBR0"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Db0LastfmJournal?d=dnMXMwOfBR0" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Db0LastfmJournal?a=_kpU5C638KY:H_dgs757B8w:YwkR-u9nhCs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Db0LastfmJournal?d=YwkR-u9nhCs" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Db0LastfmJournal?a=_kpU5C638KY:H_dgs757B8w:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Db0LastfmJournal?i=_kpU5C638KY:H_dgs757B8w:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a>
</div>Why the recording industry is so out of touchhttp://www.last.fm/user/db0/journal/2007/11/28/wwd_why_the_recording_industry_is_so_out_of_touch
Db0's Music Journalurn:uuid:2f158912-871d-ef0f-ada6-202cafe698d6Wed, 28 Nov 2007 16:27:45 +0000<div class="bbcode">Basically, the stink comes from the head...as always<br /><br />Just read <a href="http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2007/11/27/the-perspective-from-the-bottom/" rel="nofollow">this article</a>..<br /><br />Wow, just wow (and I don't mean Blizzard's)</div><div class="feedflare">
<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Db0LastfmJournal?a=IW9bj9dquK0:zTwMSnHG1es:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Db0LastfmJournal?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Db0LastfmJournal?a=IW9bj9dquK0:zTwMSnHG1es:dnMXMwOfBR0"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Db0LastfmJournal?d=dnMXMwOfBR0" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Db0LastfmJournal?a=IW9bj9dquK0:zTwMSnHG1es:YwkR-u9nhCs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Db0LastfmJournal?d=YwkR-u9nhCs" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Db0LastfmJournal?a=IW9bj9dquK0:zTwMSnHG1es:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Db0LastfmJournal?i=IW9bj9dquK0:zTwMSnHG1es:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a>
</div>Manowar Resurgencehttp://www.last.fm/user/db0/journal/2007/07/09/wwc_manowar_resurgence
Db0's Music Journalurn:uuid:209dd8ef-784f-a90f-5f94-f05de4675692Mon, 09 Jul 2007 11:16:09 +0000<div class="bbcode"><a href="http://www.last.fm/festival/229352+Magic+Circle+Festival+2007" class="bbcode_event">Fri 6 Jul – Magic Circle Music Festival</a><br /><br />I wrote a blogpost <a href="http://www.dbzer0.com/blog/2007/07/08/manowar-resurgence/" rel="nofollow"> here</a> about it.<br /><br /><sub><a href="http://www.last.fm/music/Manowar" class="bbcode_artist">Manowar</a>|<a href="http://www.last.fm/music/Gamma+Ray" class="bbcode_artist">Gamma Ray</a>|<a href="http://www.last.fm/music/Majesty" class="bbcode_artist">Majesty</a>|<a href="http://www.last.fm/music/Stormwarrior" class="bbcode_artist">Stormwarrior</a>|<a href="http://www.last.fm/music/Holy+Hell" class="bbcode_artist">Holy Hell</a></sub></div><div class="feedflare">
<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Db0LastfmJournal?a=QMyblgqg-LM:T64IjLH9XFk:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Db0LastfmJournal?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Db0LastfmJournal?a=QMyblgqg-LM:T64IjLH9XFk:dnMXMwOfBR0"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Db0LastfmJournal?d=dnMXMwOfBR0" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Db0LastfmJournal?a=QMyblgqg-LM:T64IjLH9XFk:YwkR-u9nhCs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Db0LastfmJournal?d=YwkR-u9nhCs" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Db0LastfmJournal?a=QMyblgqg-LM:T64IjLH9XFk:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Db0LastfmJournal?i=QMyblgqg-LM:T64IjLH9XFk:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a>
</div>Ambush Awakeninghttp://www.last.fm/user/db0/journal/2007/06/28/wwb_ambush_awakening
Db0's Music Journalurn:uuid:c9ed1dd4-2413-8b4a-8e4a-a15cc5afff0eThu, 28 Jun 2007 08:20:22 +0000<div class="bbcode">I've just recently discovered this great project called <a href="http://www.last.fm/music/NEU+World+Order" class="bbcode_artist">NEU World Order</a> that manages to marry music and sociopolitical messages in a wonderful package of information. <br /><br />It is true that most people are too bored to try and listen, read or see anything outside their very limited interests and that is why they let themselves be stepped on. They will only go and see something controversial because it's popular (or in another sense, ad-forced on them) like Michael Moore's films; try to have a discussion with them about such a subject and they will immediately get defensive, bored or both.<br /><br />It is a curse of our time that people spend so much time at work that when they return they do not want to bother themselves with learning. They are happy to watch TV or play video games, which is exactly what the powers that be would like you to do.<br /><br />That is why this project seems so promising imho, the music is quite relaxed and smoothing but what you hear, even when you're not paying attention, is really powerful. You don't have to waste you active time but you can listen to it while working, reading or playing.<br /><br />That is why I propose people start <strong>aggressively</strong> tagging this artist. That way when people play it on the last.fm gloval tag radio, it will pop up. My initial idea is to tag it as <a href="http://www.last.fm/tag/chill%20out" class="bbcode_tag" rel="tag">chill out</a> but if you have another opinion I'd love to hear it. <br />I truly believe that everyone should listen to these songs, at least once. But even if you do not, take the few seconds required to tag it for the greater good.<br /><br />Maybe this way, some people may discover it when they do not expect it. Perhaps the message contained within will strike a chord at a few more &quot;sleepers&quot;.</div><div class="feedflare">
<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Db0LastfmJournal?a=bD3uquFiZaQ:b8J0Xieq0vs:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Db0LastfmJournal?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Db0LastfmJournal?a=bD3uquFiZaQ:b8J0Xieq0vs:dnMXMwOfBR0"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Db0LastfmJournal?d=dnMXMwOfBR0" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Db0LastfmJournal?a=bD3uquFiZaQ:b8J0Xieq0vs:YwkR-u9nhCs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Db0LastfmJournal?d=YwkR-u9nhCs" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Db0LastfmJournal?a=bD3uquFiZaQ:b8J0Xieq0vs:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Db0LastfmJournal?i=bD3uquFiZaQ:b8J0Xieq0vs:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a>
</div>Headbanginghttp://www.last.fm/user/db0/journal/2007/06/10/20zb63_headbanging
Db0's Music Journalurn:uuid:41e70dcc-571e-c039-f712-03c6660c26d6Sun, 10 Jun 2007 21:29:13 +0000<div class="bbcode">I always felt that <a href="http://www.last.fm/music/Machinae+Supremacy" class="bbcode_artist">Machinae Supremacy</a>'s <a title="Machinae Supremacy &ndash; Rogue World Asylum" href="http://www.last.fm/music/Machinae+Supremacy/_/Rogue+World+Asylum" class="bbcode_track">Rogue World Asylum</a> would be excellent in a night club and I was not wrong. last week I brought a CD to the <a href="http://www.last.fm/group/Final+Destination" class="bbcode_group">Final Destination</a> that contained this song and the DJ, who is fast becoming my favorite, among others played the song. <br /><br />I knew I was going the be headbanging to it, but I didn't expect a few other people to do so as well. 'Twas nice and at the heavy riff point it was better :)<br /><br />Among others, the DJ played my favorite epic song, <a title="Anorimoi &ndash; Ase Katw to Dikanno Giagia" href="http://www.last.fm/music/Anorimoi/_/Ase+Katw+to+Dikanno+Giagia" class="bbcode_track">Ase Katw to Dikanno Giagia</a> but I didn't have time to listen to <a title="N-Carkade &ndash; &Rho;&epsilon;&mu;&pi;έ&tau;&eta;&sigmaf; &Mu;&epsilon;&tau;&alpha;&lambda;&lambda;ά&sigmaf;" href="http://www.last.fm/music/+noredirect/N-Carkade/_/%CE%A1%CE%B5%CE%BC%CF%80%CE%AD%CF%84%CE%B7%CF%82+%CE%9C%CE%B5%CF%84%CE%B1%CE%BB%CE%BB%CE%AC%CF%82" class="bbcode_track">&Rho;&epsilon;&mu;&pi;έ&tau;&eta;&sigmaf; &Mu;&epsilon;&tau;&alpha;&lambda;&lambda;ά&sigmaf;</a> but the time will come soon :).</div><div class="feedflare">
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</div>Why not to sign up with a major labelhttp://www.last.fm/user/db0/journal/2007/05/24/wwa_why_not_to_sign_up_with_a_major_label
Db0's Music Journalurn:uuid:6195aff3-2cef-7cf0-a668-17c2d4d19e1bThu, 24 May 2007 08:37:41 +0000<div class="bbcode">Now <a href="http://p2pnet.net/story/12314" rel="nofollow">this</a> is a very interesting article on why signing up with a major label is a <em>very</em> bad choice for fledging musicians. <br /><br />Along with articles like <a href="http://www.negativland.com/albini.html" rel="nofollow">this</a> and <a href="http://www.last.fm/out?url=http%3A%2F%2Fchocoweb.blogspot.com%2F2004%2F12%2Fcopyright-funnel.html" rel="nofollow">this</a>, it actually makes me wonder why people <em>still</em> help the recording industry cartel who's main actions lately seem to be stuff like <a href="http://blog.pandora.com/pandora/archives/2007/03/riaas_new_royal.html" rel="nofollow">killing the online radio</a>, <a href="http://www.laweekly.com/general/features/3-myths-about-the-recording-industry-debunked/1320/" rel="nofollow">lie </a> and <a href="http://www-tech.mit.edu/V126/N15/RIAA1506.html" rel="nofollow">sue into submission</a>.</div><div class="feedflare">
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</div>R@W: Machinae Supremacy - Webographyhttp://www.last.fm/user/db0/journal/2007/04/28/ww9_r@w:_machinae_supremacy_-_webography
Db0's Music Journalurn:uuid:40c30f05-7e67-f7a8-f498-aab64b8f65b2Sat, 28 Apr 2007 22:49:26 +0000<div class="bbcode">Wow, it's been almost a year after my last <a href="http://www.last.fm/user/db0/journal/2005/08/11/1944/">R@W</a> , I've finally settled to my new City (and country) and I was itching to write a new one for a while now.<br /><br />This time I have decided to take over a still pretty obscure band, <a href="http://www.last.fm/music/Machinae+Supremacy" class="bbcode_artist">Machinae Supremacy</a>.To make it even more interesting, I decided not to review any of their albums but rather <a href="http://www.machinaesupremacy.com/webography.html" rel="nofollow">the songs they released freely on the web</a> before that, excluding <a title="Machinae Supremacy - Jets'N'Guns OST" href="http://www.last.fm/music/Machinae+Supremacy/Jets%27N%27Guns+OST" class="bbcode_album">Jets'N'Guns OST</a> which is a normal album as well.<br /><br />The musical style of Machinae is what immediately draws attention.Not only because they use the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SidStation" rel="nofollow">Sidstation</a> but the general melodies give them a truly unique feel.<br />A blend of melody and metal with a healthy sprinkle of Geekiness is what most of their early work is about. They truly deserve the term progressive as well. Some times you might feel the song is going to move into electronic territory but the Electric Guitar is a constant reminder that their roots are fimly into rocks.<br /><br />Their lyrics as is to be expected, are not about love. The main issues they take up are either rebelious (such as <a title="Machinae Supremacy &ndash; Follower" href="http://www.last.fm/music/Machinae+Supremacy/_/Follower" class="bbcode_track">Follower</a><br /> or <a title="Machinae Supremacy &ndash; Legion of Stoopid" href="http://www.last.fm/music/Machinae+Supremacy/_/Legion+of+Stoopid" class="bbcode_track">Legion of Stoopid</a>), game-related (<a title="Machinae Supremacy &ndash; Arcade" href="http://www.last.fm/music/Machinae+Supremacy/_/Arcade" class="bbcode_track">Arcade</a>) or just plain weird. It's not always quite easy to get the general meaning of their songs as their lyrics are not always easy to understand.<br /><br />My personal preference is to their instrumental songs over their normal ones but this mostly has to do with the fact that I can't get used to the voice of the singer. It just doesn't give the passion that is needed. I've yet to listen to their later works such as <a title="Machinae Supremacy - Redeemer" href="http://www.last.fm/music/Machinae+Supremacy/Redeemer" class="bbcode_album">Redeemer</a>, however so this aspect may have improved.<br /><br />One such amazing Instumental song that immediately drew my attention is <a title="Machinae Supremacy &ndash; Cryosleep" href="http://www.last.fm/music/Machinae+Supremacy/_/Cryosleep" class="bbcode_track">Cryosleep</a>. The whole melody behind it transfers a very melancholic feeling to the listener.<br />This should of course be chased by <a title="Machinae Supremacy &ndash; Winterstorm" href="http://www.last.fm/music/Machinae+Supremacy/_/Winterstorm" class="bbcode_track">Winterstorm</a> which is on a similar vein but with lyrics this time ;)<br /><br /><a title="Machinae Supremacy &ndash; Hero" href="http://www.last.fm/music/Machinae+Supremacy/_/Hero" class="bbcode_track">Hero</a> has become one of my favorites as well as it starts powerfully with an interesting riff and even includes a nice solo near the end in the classic spirit of rock.<br /><br />For those nostalgic of those 8bit times long past, you'll be happily surprised by <a title="Machinae Supremacy &ndash; Steve's Quest" href="http://www.last.fm/music/Machinae+Supremacy/_/Steve%27s+Quest" class="bbcode_track">Steve's Quest</a> whose happy sid-music is certain to brings back memories<br /><br />Machinae seem to like doing strange covers for songs and for a rocker, any such covers are always an improvement. Starting with the charming phrase <em>&quot;Support your local terrorists&quot;</em> <a title="Machinae Supremacy &ndash; Sidstyler" href="http://www.last.fm/music/Machinae+Supremacy/_/Sidstyler" class="bbcode_track">Sidstyler</a> is on of those where you get the nice melody of Freestyler with a good dose of Metal and Sid. ;)<br /><br />Of course thir review would not be complete unless I mentioned the Sidology trilogy. Three instrumental songs, the second of which goes on for 12 minutes, and the last one is just a trip into memory lane with covers of songs like the Arcanoid and Bubble Bobble theme songs...in metal! Fun!<br /><br /><a href="http://www.machinaesupremacy.com/" rel="nofollow">Machinae Supremacy</a> are now one of the newer bands I follow. I tend to listen to them frequently just because of the inherent geekiness of a band like that. The fact that they mix Rock/Metal into this makes them that much better.<br />I heartily propose any Geek with metal tendencies to check them out asap and anyone interested in interesting progressive bands should not miss them either. With the songs of this review available for free on their webpage, you have no excuse not to check them out.</div><div class="feedflare">
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</div>The end of Last.fm Radio?http://www.last.fm/user/db0/journal/2007/03/03/ww8_the_end_of_last.fm_radio%3F
Db0's Music Journalurn:uuid:da5f54de-b9b8-5019-dc2a-0ba579050945Sat, 03 Mar 2007 23:06:57 +0000<div class="bbcode"><a href="http://www.save-internet-radio.com/2007/03/02/save-internet-radio/" rel="nofollow">This</a> is greatly disturbing.<br /><br />If this passes it means a radio station would have to pay exorbant fees just to keep broadcasting. I don't think last.fm would be able to afford this even if every registered user was a subscriber.<br /><br />Now I know some of you will say that last.fm is based in London, UK, but EU countries are usually quick to copy US based regulations.<br /><br />Fight to get this greedy policy stopped before it destroys everyone's experience.<br /><br />EDIT: <a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20070304/223155.shtml" rel="nofollow">Here's</a> a good analysis on Techdirt</div><div class="feedflare">
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